Saturday, July 03, 2004
 
Statute of Limitations for Pillage

I am going to write to my Congressman, Todd Akin, and ask him to introduce a bill into Congress that sets a statute of limitation for pillage and other historical wrongs.

In addition to the newly-normal clamor for slave reparations (for an injustice done 140 years ago at the minimum in this country), it looks as though some people are suing Elizabeth Taylor over a painting that's been in her family for two generations now, which is 41 years in absolute reckoning:
    Descendants of Margarete Mauthner allege "View of the Asylum of Saint-Remy" was taken from the German woman during World War II, and are demanding that Taylor returns the painting, which appraisers said could fetch $10 million to $15 million at auction.

    Taylor, whose father bought her the painting at a London auction in 1963, has filed a lawsuit seeking a pre-emptive court declaration that she is the rightful owner of the painting, which hangs in the living room of her Bel-Air estate.
After forty years, descendents are suing, which means that no one involved in the pillaging is available for testimony. I understand it's fifteen million dollars in the balance, but give me a break. Undoubtedly, each dollar and possession that passes through my hands has some unethical heritage in its ancestry if one were to look deeply enough, and with enough imagination, but that does not give others the right to take it from me in the name of their wronged ancestors from millenia past.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:38 PM
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To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."