1. They talk a lot about slavery.

When people hear "reparations," they automatically think that what's being discussed is reparations for slavery. Coates does talk about slavery in the piece — in particular, he notes the story of a formerly enslaved woman named Bellinda Royal who sued her former owner for recompense for her labors. But much of his focus falls on American housing policy from nearly a century later, events that have happened within living (and even recent) memory.

In the years following World War II, the economy was booming. Suburbs were popping up, thanks to a new federal highway system and millions of Americans availing themselves of government-backed home loans. World War II vets used their GI Bill benefits to pay for college or start their lives. The government was essentially subsidizing the creation of America's huge middle class.

Unless you were black. Coates outlines a constellation of ways that African-Americans were thoroughly shut out of that expansion of wealth. He spends much more time on the events of the 20th and 21st centuries than he does on the antebellum period. To Coates, one needn't go back as far as slavery to see officially sanctioned (and occasionally violent) opposition to black wealth creation.

Glenn Beck's natives are getting very restless, and many of them are now taking their frustrations out on him.

The organizers of last Friday's "Operation American Spring" (OAS) had claimed their massive Washington D.C. protest, "calling for the removal of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, and Eric Holder as a start toward constitutional restoration," was likely to draw 10 million to 30 million fed-up American patriots to the nation's capital.

To the weekend-long bemusement of Democrats and progressives, the number of attendees at the rally was closer to 10 people than to 30 million. As even the rightwing Washington Times reported, attendance fell "woefully below expectations," with turnout claims varying from a few hundred to a few thousand. "Hundreds is more like it," said one of the attendees quoted by the Times.

Progressives were predictably entertained by the dismal failure of the umpteenth rally to save our nation from the "outlaws" or "commies" or "Muslims" or "Constitution haters" who have now taken it over the government — through peaceful elections. But once the King of the American Patriots himself, Glenn Beck, and his online "news" outlet The Blaze, appeared to join in to mock the event, the real patriots could no longer hold their tongues.