Matt: Do you consider reparations for the Holocaust to be mere "shtick", as you dismissively refer to the Black efforts to gain reparations for 400 years of slavery, or are reparations to Jews OK with you because it's a little closer to home?

What if Jews had been enslaved in America for 400 years, freed in 1865, but had limited -- if not virtually non-existent -- rights and opporturtunities until 1964.

Would you mock their efforts at reparations as "shtick"? I don't think you would. That's why we on the left see a great deal of self-serving hypocrisy on the right.

Guacamole,

Holocaust reparations were paid to actual death camp survivors, and to some direct ancestors of Europeans who had property confiscated. I suppose if you can find actual living former slaves, or living children of American blacks who had property confiscated based on race, they'd deserve reparations.

But a reparations model based on such criterion - i.e. survivors of death camps/racial purges/class purges/slavery, or their children, invites a lot of company these days, Even more so, if you extend it several generations forward from the actual victims. Think of it: if American blacks living today deserve reparations for slavery and systemic discrimination in the years leading up to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, what about the first, second and third generations of ancestors of the 65 million people, minimum, who were killed by communist regimes in the 20th Century? (Take a good read of "The Black Book Of Communism"). What about the spouses and children of the 300,000 to 1 million people (estimates vary) sent to mass graves by Saddam Hussein in Iraq? What about the surviving spouses and children of the 2 million black Christians and animists in Southern Sudan who were murdered, raped and/or displaced by the (literal) scorched-earth policy of the ruling Islamic theocrats in Khartoum, and their Islamic "janjaweed" militias? What about the people in Cuba who had their property confiscated in Fidel Castro's 1958 revolution and fled for their lives to the U.S.? What about the rural Chinese property owners who continue to have their property confiscated with scant, or zero recompense, by Beijing? This is happening NOW.

All Americans today, including blacks, have unrivaled opportunity, freedoms, and protections. The black grad students of UC Berkeley who enjoy skiing trips to Lake Tahoe every year are just the tip of the iceberg.

I realize the costs involved are prohibitive for the world to try to recompense the victims, families, and subsequent generations of peoples who have been systematically and unfairly damaged by their fellow humans.

Why then, do you suppose , that Jews and the American Japanese who were imprisoned in WWII in the U.S. are somehow more deserving of reparations over and above all these other groups? Both groups receive reparations. Are the reparations political stunts to engender good will? "Shtick" , if you will.

I remember reading not so long ago about the daughter of a Holocaust victim who finally recovered from the Swiss, I believe, some paintings that were stolen by the Nazis from her parents. She accepted the returned paintings in her LA mansion. Do posh surroundings make her undeserving of receiving the paintings, much the way that you feel the Tahoe setting makes the black claims for reparations , "shtick". Should I be offended at this rich old ladies shtick about getting her parents paintings back -- especially in her posh surroundings?

What I'm asking is this: Why do you feel that Jews should recieve reparations, but no one else should?