I've got to hand it to GOP Senate candidate Alan Keyes. After blowing into the Midwest at the urging of the "people of Illinois" - to save us from Barack Obama's radical left-wing plans to turn our state into what Keyes characterizes as a Godless blend of Sodom and the former Soviet Union - he proposes this gem of cultural unification: reparations for descendants of Black slaves, by way of two generations' worth of Federal tax amnesty. The Chicago Tribune [reg. req.] ran a story yesterday detailing Keyes' proposal:

Keyes proposed that for a generation or two, African-Americans of slave heritage should be exempted from federal taxes--federal because slavery "was an egregious failure on the part of the federal establishment." In calling for the tax relief, Keyes appeared to be reaching out to capture the black vote, something that may prove difficult to do, particularly after his unwelcome reception at the Bud Billiken Day Parade [Chicago Tribune, reg. req.] Saturday.

The former ambassador said his plan would give African-Americans "a competitive edge in the labor market," because those exempted would be cheaper to hire than federal tax-paying employees and would "compensate for all those years when your labor was being exploited."

Under Keyes' plan, African-Americans would still have to pay the Social Security tax, because "it's not a tax in the strict sense," said Keyes, calling it instead a payment to support a social insurance program. Keyes has discussed reparations before with statements that seem to contradict Monday's comments.

In 2002 on his short-lived MSNBC show, "Alan Keyes is Making Sense," he argued with one of his guests, an advocate of reparations, asking, "You want to tell me that what they suffered can actually be repaired with money? You're going to do the same thing those slaveholders did, put a money price on something that can't possibly be quantified in that way."

And in a 2002 column titled "Paid in Blood," Keyes called lawsuits on behalf of slave descendants against large corporations an "effort to extort `reparations' for slavery from their fellow citizens" and said that "the truth of the Civil War is that the terrible price for American slavery has been paid, once for all," when Americans gave their lives on the battlefield to end slavery. "The price for the sin of slavery," Keyes wrote, "has already been paid, in blood."

[Note: somehow, the words "flip-flop" keep popping into my head. I wonder why.]

Slave reparations have been bandied about for many years, but most people would concede that their practical application would be a challenge, to say the least. First of all, who would be included in the set of people slated to receive reparation benefits? Perhaps too much time has passed for slave reparations to ever be effectively distributed, and their fair disbursement impossible.

To receive the reparations tax anmesty, would it be enough to look African-American, or to sign an affidavit stating one has slave ancestry? Since there are essentially no more children - and very few grandchildren - of former slaves still alive, the state at the very least would need to conduct extensive historical research into each applicant's claim to prove reparations eligibility. Complicating matters is the issue of mixed racial heritage: would the amount of reparation depend on how much "slave blood" a potential recipient had? Where should the threshold be set, and would it become some reversion of the infamous "One Drop" Rule?

What if an applicant had one great-grandparent who was a slave, and seven others who never were slaves? Would this person receive a prorated one-eighth reparation benefit of someone who could demonstrate 100% slave heritage? If an applicant had two, three, or more bonafide slave ancestors, would the payout be proportionately greater? Then there is the shameful problem of slave family records. Since the African men and women taken from their home countries were essentially treated like subhuman livestock, centuries of their genealogical records are spotty to nonexistent.

To be sure, America’s slave years were a disgraceful time in our history; as were the many years after emancipation when free Black Americans still bore the brunt of centuries of racism. In many ways, they still do. But I don’t think monetary payout or tax amnesties are an answer. At the risk of invoking an unnecessarily paternalistic analogy, to enact slave reparations now would be the equivalent of a horribly abusive, absent parent’s return into a child’s life after many years bearing armloads of gifts. "It’s okay now, right? We can forget about all those bad times. Look at this nice fur coat, this big-screen TV. Don’t you love me now? Or at least don’t hate me as much?"

Not so fast. Slave reparations in any form will neither eliminate the sting of racism, nor magically cleanse America’s karma of historical wrongdoing. We can never change the past, but we can change the present and future by providing Americans of all ethnicities opportunity and assistance. And yes - that includes Affirmative Action. It’s not perfect, but it’s still a better solution than Keyes’ misleading, empty promises of tax-based reparations.

Obama responded to Keyes' comments by saying that the "legacy and stain of slavery is immeasurable," but that he did not believe that the form of reparations backed by Keyes was the proper method to repair that damage.

"I generally think that the best strategies for moving forward involve vigorously enforcing our anti-discrimination laws in education and job training and other programs that can lift all people out of poverty," Democrat Obama said.

Much tension would result from one group's having freedom from the income tax burden on the basis of race...after all, Illinois is still a rather racially-divided state, and this plan wouldn't help matters one bit.

But there's another essential problem with income tax based reparations, because the U.S. income tax is progressive; in concept, those with higher incomes pay proportionately more in taxes, and those with the least are taxed at a lower rate. Black Americans at the lowest income levels - those who are unemployed or underemployed, who most need the financial help - would receive little or no benefit under Keyes' plan, while wealthier ones who have already succeeded in negotiating "the System" stand to receive to greatest financial benefit. This sounds like a plan "trickle-down" Republicans could really take to heart.

Freedom from paying income tax for two generations does absolutely nothing for the family whose breadwinners don't have jobs. In fact, it's no freedom at all.

S.F.A.P. ["Subject for nother post"]: I also find Alan Keyes' extreme views on abortion chilling - he apparently even wants to ban abortion in cases of rape and incest:

Keyes also talked about abortion Monday and specifically about his objection to abortion in the case of rape and incest, asking rhetorically, "We should kill a daughter because the father is a rapist? We should kill a child because its parents committed incest?"

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin's Reparations Calculator.

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