Among many telltale signs of the tectonic fissures dividing the nation, perhaps the most telling is the near universal call by prominent Democrats and others for reparations.  This refers to a compensatory payment made to the descendants of African slaves brought to America through the Atlantic Slave Trade.  It is unworkable, but it speaks loudly of the state of our politics and culture. Proponents of reparations argue passionately of the stain of slavery, the long, dark shadow cast by this cruel institution across the American soul.  This great evil, the original sin of slavery, has cursed the nation at its inception, at the founding, and in our founding documents.  The country is thus irredeemably marred and defective, and the blot of that dark inheritance is fixed in our moral DNA.  This insidious legacy lives on in America, in the systemic racism that pervades the nation, and the disparate outcomes of blacks and whites in all...(Read Full Article)