1 Just keep it up with the poetry, nancy-boy, but be forewarned: Benedict XVI is watching you.

You don't even know the meaning of "heart-ache."

(And by the way, you don't need to point out that Alexander Pope was Catholic. I know.)

2 That was a pretty interesting essay. I've always thought it was pretty damned stupid for one generation to apologize for a past generation's misdeeds as if they had anything to do with it. Until now, I've never heard the term "Punitive Liberal" but now, thanks to Ace, I'm more "enlightened"....

3 who is Bill? ;-)

4 It is more than unfair to hold a generation responsible for what a previous generation did, it is pure racism. To hold one group of whites responsible for what some other group of whites men may have done to others is as racist as any slaveholder ever was. Since the second group had no involvement in what the first group may have done, exactly why is the second group held responsible for the deeds of others? Becauser of the color of their skin, and for no other reason. This racist, punative Liberalism has led to the bizarre result in which whites, while still the richest and most powerful group by far in this country, have allowed themselves to be "put on the back of the bus" behind blacks and minorities in education, employment hiring and advancement, and housing because of some strange percieved guilt about things they are not guilty of. But mostly because Liberalism has created and and institutionalized racism against them through a gigantic network of government organizations and laws designed to "punish" them for percieved wrongdoings and because the Left knows how to make trouble through boycott, (the original instrument of change in the civil rights movement). This terrible wrong will be redressed some day.

When the last Supreme Court decision on affirmative action came down, the blacks were as surprised as I was that it affirmed this terrible injustice. At the time, I said it had put us back ten years, I was wrong, it has put us back twenty years.

5 I've always thought it was pretty damned stupid for one generation to apologize for a past generation's misdeeds

Yes and it is wrong for many reasons. Besides the fact that it is pure racism in itself, to attempt to go back and redress all wrongs ever done to any group opens the bizarre Pandora's box we have today: reverse discrimination against an entire class of innocent people based upon skin color, and the government giving away land and rights to gambling casinos to a group who held the land once but were displaced from it. There is no end to it. Past wrongs are almost infinite and can be dredged up any time, which makes this "debtor" group perpetually in debt for things it never did. So-called "native Americans" have no right to demand reparations for having lost their land to whites: they had taken it from another Indian group, who had taken it from another Indian group and on down. To establish a chain of title to the land that ends with the last Indian group who owned it before whites took it over singles out white people for a special punishment based upon the fact that they still hold the land. Why are the Osages given rewards when they took it from the Fox, who took it from the Black feet, who took it from the Karankawa who took it from someone else, and on down into the mists of antiquity? What right had any of them to take the land at all in the first place? They took the land and held it by Right of Conquest, a right long accepted in human history.

If white people continue to accept this kind of racism and theft foisted upon them by Liberals, they will have, in effect, allowed themselves to be conquered by a few groups who were vastly smaller, vastly weaker and had no legitimate claims. And if we continue to allow this to go on, we deserve what we get.

6 "There is no end to it. Past wrongs are almost infinite and can be dredged up any time."

Indeed. Like with Japanese, the apologies are never enough, they must flagellate their selves again and again in public for the delight of the Politburo to keep the Chinese distracted. Apologies demanded, but never accepted.

7 Lazar - Yes, and the process of selecting what "wrongs" were done done to whom and which shall be "redressed" comes down to pure politics, the very worst way to do anything.

8 "There is no end to it. Past wrongs are almost infinite and can be dredged up any time."

Forgot to add that in law, there is the universally recognized concept of the statute of limitations precisely because of this!

9 Yes, and the process of selecting what "wrongs" were done done to whom and which shall be "redressed" comes down to pure politics

Just so. It is un-PC to mention genocide in Tibet, or the invasion of South Korea. Likewise don't mention the multiple treaties broken by the Indians and the odd, you know, slaughter of non-Indian folk.