It’s hard getting old. Bernie Sanders is getting old and he’s not thinking straight. It doesn’t help that his political philosophy is out of whack.

His latest scheme to get votes is demanding that white America apologize for slavery. I’m pretty sure that the deaths of 600,000 dead American citizens who died to “free the slaves” is quite an apology.

Not to mention the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, Affirmative Action, the expanding welfare system, the War on Poverty, naming streets after Martin Luther King, Jr., establishing the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Holiday, Black History Month, and so much more.

Slavery was evil from the get go. It was a tragic rejection of all that is holy and good. The Bible condemns “manstealing” – a form of kidnapping – and punished it with death (Ex. 21:16). America paid a heavy price for the practice of slavery.

Let’s get a few things straight.

First, I’ve never kidnapped anyone or enslaved anyone. In fact, there isn’t a person alive today who has ever owned a slave.

Second, neither I nor any other non-slave holder should have to apologize for something they did not do.

Third, my ancestors came from Italy and settled in the United States in the early part of the 20^th century. I have all the necessary documents to prove it. They were not in the slave trade. They were discriminated against, certainly not like blacks during the era of slavery, but with epithets like Dago, WOP, and dirty Italians and discrimination based on the fact that they were Italian. The same can be side of the Irish when signs were often posted, “Help Wanted:  No Irish Need Apply.”

In 2002, Professor Richard Jensen, then a Professor of History at the University of Illinois, published an article that the signs and advertisements “were likely a myth, a figment of the collective Irish American imagination.” A high school student proved him wrong with some dogged research of her own.

“The job advertisements with NINA restrictions include ‘clerks at stores and hotels, bartenders, farm workers, house painters, hog butchers, coachmen, bookkeepers, blackers, workers at lumber yards, upholsterers, bakers, gilders, tailors, and papier mache workers, among others.’ In addition to job postings, [Rebecca A. Fried, a high-school student at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC] discovered many other mentions of NINA-related incidents.” (H/T: Irish Central)

Then there are the Chinese who were used like slave labor in building the railroads. “(B)y 1924, all Asian immigrants (except people from the Philippines, which had been annexed by the United States in 1898) were utterly excluded by law, denied citizenship and naturalization, and prevented from marrying Caucasians or owning land.”

Again, the Italians, Irish, and Chinese have not been discriminated against like kidnapped Africans had been, but only those people who did the discriminating should apologize, and they are all dead.

Some Blacks who are calling for reparations will argue that Whites today have and are benefiting from what slaves contributed to America in terms of their forced labor. Of course the same could be said of the Italians, Irish, Chinese, and Jews who were discriminated against. And let’s not forget that Blacks have also benefited. Some sports are dominated by Blacks. Oprah is one of the richest women in the world. “Nike has signed Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James to a lifetime deal in what one source familiar with the negotiations said is the largest single-athlete guarantee in company history. . . (T)he Air Jordan brand, which began in 1985, had surpassed $2.2 billion in annual sales.” (H/T: ESPN) Are Jordan and James making money off the remnants of slavery since many Black kids stand in line for days to get the latest release?

Calls for apologies and reparations are all about money and the consolidation of political power. They are designed to extract money from guilt-ridden Americans to pay for votes to solidify the liberal powerbase. None of these causes actually help anyone. They are not designed to help but only to keep the underclass voting Democrat.