Zinger

The only good thing about really dumb people is that they sometimes prompt brilliant responses.

For example, take your average really dumb person:

Possibly the most preposterous notion to come from the radical Left is that blacks should be given free money expropriated by force from everyone else as a reward for having ancestors who were given a hard time — just like the ancestors of every human being on the planet. I won't insult the reader's intelligence by explaining the absurdity of thinking this unjust and profoundly moronic concept would improve race relations.

And place him next to D at LGM:

Mmmm, somehow I think insulting your readers' intelligence might actually be a steeper challenge than you think.

Bang!

Don't Get Distracted Now

The House Judiciary Committee held hearings on John Conyers' bill to study the issue of reparations (you can read my own several-years-old thoughts on reparations here). All the witnesses had interesting things to say, though if you're only going to read one, Eric Miller's testimony is, in my opinion, particularly interesting and insightful (particularly in how it seeks to broaden the discourse beyond stale cliches about "blaming Whitey").

At the other end of the intelligence spectrum, there's shorter Roger Clegg:

Studying reparations would be bad, because it would distract Black people from remembering that all their problems are their own fault. Also, why should the US government apologize for slavery, when it had nothing to do with it? Now, if Democrats want to apologize for racial injustice, that would be just swell.

Other common themes from the anti-reparations (or rather, anti-studying reparations, since that's all the bill would do) crowd include that there are many confusing questions to ask about reparations (which would seem to be an argument for studying the issue), some Blacks don't descend from slaves and some Whites don't descend from slave owners (which a) is meaningless, because some do and some are, and b) assumes that the fruits of the slave system only affect its direct descendants which probably isn't true), and (my personal favorite) that reparations are "radical" because Whites oppose them, even though Blacks support them. The latter, incidentally, are only supporting them because of their financial interest in the matter (the former, of course, are coming to a neutral and dispassionate conclusion the way only White citizens can).

Via Christopher Bracey.