This weekend California Rep. Sara Jacobs told CNN’s censorious scold Brian Stelter that in the wake of the non-leftist Capitol riot the United States needs a “Truth Commission.”
Jacobs said Americans have not come to terms with the white supremacist nature of our country’s past, or, as she puts it “the gory and the glory.” All of that, she claimed, culminated with the Qanon Shaman raiding the seat of government with his legion of fringe weirdos. You can hear her full explanation below.
Rep. @SaraJacobsCA tells @brianstelter that America now needs a “Truth Commission”
Stelter: "Do you think the House and Senate leadership have the stomach for that?”
Jacobs: "I think so." pic.twitter.com/7c27KI2OXy
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 14, 2021
Jacobs is not the first, nor shall she be the last, to float this ludicrous nonsense. Presumably, this commission would be directed at the tens of Americans who think slavery was a good thing and the Indians had it coming. It would be a valuable opportunity for communities to come together to blame white people and their ancestors for everything wrong in the country. What could possibly be more unifying?
Proponents of this kind of festival of grievance, as Jacobs did, like to point to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But there is an important difference between that situation and where America finds itself today.
South African Apartheid fully ended in 1994. Their Truth and Reconciliation Commission began two years later, in 1996. It makes sense that when black South Africans had been living under brutal and legal racial oppression just a few years prior, the white South Africans might need a way to say, “Sorry about that, please don’t do it to us now that you are in charge.”
To compare that to the current situation in the United States is absurd. There has not been a law in this country that directly discriminates based on race in favor of white people in more than 50 years. Who exactly are we going to drag in front of this commission? Ancient World War II veterans from Alabama? What two sides are we trying to bring together here? And why are progressives always insisting that America has racial sides at all?
What truth does Jacobs think we are going to arrive at with such a commission? That the United States is rife with “structural racism?”
I’ll make her a deal. If she or anyone else can explain what that even means, I’ll provide lunch for the commission. But the explanation has to include why Asian Americans outperform white Americans in income and educational attainment in the United States. I mean, there must be some dastardly reason white Americans are forcing Asians to perform at such high levels, right?
Also, who would be running this commission? Would it be Congress? But Congress is mostly white. Maybe it could be run by just non-white members of Congress? Perhaps through segregation we can find equality and truth?
Would it be on TV? Why would anybody watch that? It sounds dull, pointless, and sanctimonious. That is not a fantastic combination.
All kidding aside, although the idea of an American Truth Commission on racism deserves ridicule, the reason we don’t need it is that America is not a racist country. Immigrants from Africa and Latin America aren’t stupid. They don’t wake up one day and decide they want to live in a nation steeped in white supremacy. They want to live in a country where they can succeed no matter their skin color. That place is called the United States of America.
The far-left’s obsession with casting our nation as uniquely evil is bizarre and dangerous. The only possible purpose it could serve is to allow the followers of this fallacy that we are steeped in sin to use the power of the commission to silence and punish those who will not accept this wretched and libelous description of America.
Make no mistake: that is their purpose. They may be fooling themselves into thinking it is in fact virtuous, but they aren’t convincing the rest of us, and we won’t stand for it.
It’s time to put this idea to bed once and for all, if for no other reason than nobody who is not already a leftist loony on these issues will have anything to do with it. Are people to be dragged to testify against their will? Just hold a conference on critical race theory and leave the rest of us alone to live our lives in the freest country on earth.
