who do not go along with the institutionalized racism." Sure, but the combined populations of those states is about 85,000,000 people. Chances are good that a lot of those millions and millions are racist. It's well-known that evil, virulent racism continues to be rampant in the Old South, far more so than in the North. I wouldn't be at all surprised if most, if not all states of the Confederacy, would return to slavery given the opportunity to vote for it.
Besides, I corrected myself by limiting further retribution to only the descendants of slaveholders. Even if a handful of them fall into your category of "decent white people who are not bigots," they still need to pay for what their slaveholding white ancestors did. Don't remember the title of it, but there's another General Discussion thread with an opening post that says the South wasn't punished enough after the Civil War. I'm just trying to come up with ways to rectify that error -- without, in fact, collection 150 years of interest on the oversight.
Here's my new suggestion -- and it will take into account your observation about tens of thousands of decent white people in the South. Since the South didn't get punished nearly enough in the 19th and 20th centuries, amend the Constitution to set up 50 years of punishment, starting as soon as the new amendment is ratified. The essence of the amendment would be to reduce the electoral votes in the states that made up the Confederacy by 50% for the next 50 years and also reduce their representation in the House and the Senate for the same 50 years. Details would have to be worked out, but the wording of the amendment still shouldn't take up more than a relatively short paragraph or two. If we increased tax rates for them as well -- heck, we'd have even more money to fund federal social programs. We might even consider reducing federal benefits for descendants of slaveholders, too. It's time they paid for the sins of their fathers ... and mother, too, I suppose.
To the states I mentioned above, add Florida and Tennessee. That makes the total population affected about 111,000,000. With the federal representation of the former Confederate States of America reduced by half, that would give Democrats a huge edge in federal elections for the next 50 years.
It should be easy to return to two-thirds or greater majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. (Having fewer representatives and senators makes that easier.) With super-super-majorities in both houses of Congress and a Democrat in the Oval Office, we'd be able to get back to the kind of edge we had in the mid-1960s, after Kennedy's assassination.
We'd be able to pass just about any legislation we wanted to to bring about social justice. We'd be able to dramatically reduce military spending. Single payer health care would be a cinch. Not to mention being able to fill all Supreme Court vacancies and federal judge vacancies with liberals. Etc. ...
Why, we'd be able to approach.... Well, the words Nirvana and utopia come to mind.
= new reply since forum marked as read
