Keyes muddies the water even more

Alan Keyes has issued a press release in response to the outrage his slavery reparations comments caused among his voting base.  According to the Illinois Leader, he said the following in an attempt to clarify his remarks:

I have consistently opposed the effort to extort monetary damages from the American people. As I have argued in the past, the great sacrifices involved in the Civil War represented the requital in blood and treasure for the terrible injustices involved in slavery. In this form the so called "reparations" movement represents an insult to the historic commitment that many Americans made to the end of slavery, which included the sacrifice of their lives.

I have also consistently maintained that the history of slavery, racial segregation and discrimination did real damage to black Americans, left real and persistent material wounds in need of healing.

In various ways through the generations since the end of slavery, America has tried to address this objective fact, but without real success. This was at least in part the rational for many elements of the Great Society programs of the sixties, and for the original and proper concept of affirmative action developed under Republican leadership during the Nixon years.

Unfortunately, the government-dominated approaches of the Great Society, which purported to heal and repair the legacy of historical damage, actually widened and deepened the wounds. They undermined the moral foundations of the black community and seriously corrupted the family structure and the incentives to work, savings, investment, and business ownership.

The idea I have often put forward to address this challenge involves a traditionally Republican, conservative and market-oriented approach: removing the tax burden from the black community for a generation or two in order to encourage business ownership, create jobs and support the development of strong economic foundations for working families.

This has the advantage of letting people help themselves, rather then pouring money into government bureaucracies that displace and discourage their own efforts. It takes no money from other citizens, while righting the historic imbalance that results from the truth that black slaves toiled for generations at a tax rate that was effectively 100 percent.

I have also made it clear that while I believe that the descendants of slaves would be helped by this period of tax relief, my firm goal and ultimate objective is to replace the income tax, and thereby free all Americans from this insidious form of tax slavery. It is well known that this is one of the key priorities of the Keyes campaign.

So here's what we have: Mr. Keyes still abhors reparations, but he still favors this idea of removing the tax burden for a generation or two, but the tax relief is for the entire American black community, not just for the descendants of slaves, so it's not really reparations, see?

He persists in his belief that this is win-win for everyone.  "It takes no money from other citizens"?  Does Mr. Keyes think that Congress would simply write that tax revenue out of the budget and adjust spending accordingly?  Or does he think that the anticipated increased economic activity in the black community will more than make up for the lost revenue?  Also, as I mentioned in my previous post, what does he think this will do for race relations?

I doubt that this clarification will help Mr. Keyes very much.  The conservative activists over at Free Republic are having trouble making heads or tails of what he's trying to say, and that fact doesn't bode well for the rest of the voters he's trying to court.