charley reese gets philosophical

...in this piece entitled "Not Feeling Guilty", posted on LRC today.

I don't feel guilty about slavery. I don't feel guilty about the fate of Native Americans. In fact, I don't feel guilty about anything that happened prior to the date of my birth.

I never owned a slave or desired to, nor did I ever shoot an Indian and steal his land. I say this because there are a lot of special-interest groups trying to lay guilt trips on Americans of European ancestry. That is nothing more than a con game. All we inherit from our ancestors are genes.

The past happened as it happened, and there is nothing we can do about it. The Persian poet Omar Khayyam had it right when he said, "The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it."

People who never owned slaves who apologize to people who were never slaves only succeed in making public fools of themselves. Our ancestors don't give half a cow pie what we think of them. People who were never slaves and want people who never owned slaves to pay them money are just trying to pull off a con job. Good luck if they can find somebody stupid enough to fall for it.