D'ya Make 'er?

Jamaica is looking for reparations for slavery. This is shorthand for ‘we can’t hack it without our masters, so give us money’. Do leave off, didn’t Tony Blair apologise for all that already? You’d think that would be enough, but apparently not. It seems that for some the sins of the father must be visited upon the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandsons... A caller to Iain Dale’s LBC show got quite excited over it all. (Have a listen - it’s hilarious.) Well, if we’re going down that road let’s demand reparation for every bad thing that was ever done by mankind to man. Slavery has been practised for millennia and by most peoples... I demand my compensation from whoever I can guilt-trip into coughing up. It’s mental, isn’t it and I plan to blame the Americans; I just need to build a case and then demand the dosh.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident:” they declare, “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Their creator? Unalienable? Who says? It sounds like they were already feeling pretty guilty though and they’ve been cringing about it all ever since. But the bit I have trouble with is that phrase, ‘among these’. You mean there’s more?

Once you start off giving people undefined rights you are embarking along a road paved with pain. Just look at all the rights we have these days and – far from equal – some rights trump others. The right of certain people to practice torture of their own daughters because it’s ‘their culture’ beats the hand that holds the rights of white girls not to be serially gang raped. Demanding the beheading of all non-believers is acceptable behaviour because brown ,but quoting from Churchill’s River War because Douglas Murray is an arrestable offence. I’m seeing a pattern.

Interestingly, those who have the greatest human rights at the moment appear to be a sect who routinely capture and abuse slaves. I’d say there was something self-evident here; that all men are simply not created equal and some believe their creator not only breathes superiority into them but allows them to practise slavery. So it turns out the US Declaration of Independence, along with its constitution is just another piece of doctrine that can be ignored when convenient to do so.

And how do we deal with self-inflicted inequality, such as practised by spouses in abusive relationships they won’t leave, or the millions choosing to make themselves wards of state instead of paying their own way? What about those habituees of the prison system? Or identifying yourself as an oppressed minority and moaning about it? Yes, I know we mean equality of opportunity, treatment under the law, employment terms and so on, but some people function far better on a lower rung than at any dizzy height.

The cruise ship even has a gym!

I’d say we do pretty well by our less-than-equals and have nobody to answer to. As for reparation for ancient deeds, where is our reward for recognising the barbarism of African and Middle Eastern slavers and ending the trade? Was setting them free, educating them, giving them land and letting them profit from it not enough? Do we now have to work to support you and your descendants for ever just because you have the tinge of the galley about you? What did your last slave die of?