Lets everyone just apologise for everything together!

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Thunderball

What I find mildly amusing and ironic is most of the people who are in favor of apologizing for actions done 50+ years ago, are typically the same people who vehemently oppose capital punishment on the grounds that a simple act will not make the initial act of evil go away. Yes, they are very different creatures, but they both have the same goals... restitution and justice.

I would be most interested to read the study you pulled this stat from.

[Thunderball]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

I would be most interested to read the study you pulled this stat from.

Its an opinion based on observation... it doesn't have to be empirically noted to be noteworthy.

But if you want something empirical... liberal democratic states are most inclined to be opposed to capital punishment (most don't have it, US is the big exception and its not universal there)... as well, the majority of apologies for past acts have come either on the demand of a liberal democratic state (Germany post WW2) or by a liberal democratic state itself.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Thunderball

Its an opinion based on observation... it doesn't have to be empirically noted to be noteworthy.

But if you want something empirical... liberal democratic states are most inclined to be opposed to capital punishment (most don't have it, US is the big exception and its not universal there)... as well, the majority of apologies for past acts have come either on the demand of a liberal democratic state (Germany post WW2) or by a liberal democratic state itself.

While I think I see what you are saying, that is a terrible argument. You appear to be grabbing unsubstantiated facts and saying they are related.

[Thunderball]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

While I think I see what you are saying, that is a terrible argument. You appear to be grabbing unsubstantiated facts and saying they are related.

How is that a terrible argument. It supports the personal statement that I made earlier. They aren't unsubstantiated facts, both are quite factual... I'm not going to go to the trouble of digging them up detail for the purposes of a hockey forum... but...

Its pretty common knowledge that liberal democratic societies are inherently opposed to capital punishment with few exceptions. Look it up.

Its pretty common knowledge that non-liberal democratic countries don't apologize for past actions unless they can be forced. China and Russia are pretty solid examples of countries that have committed atrocities that have not even admitted they happened. Neither are liberal democratic. There's several other examples in the Middle East, Africa and South America.

I said that I find it ironic that people who seem to be opposed to one form of symbolic restitution, are very much in favor of another. Like I said, while the two seem unrelated, the motives are similar.

[BlackEleven]

Originally Posted by Thunderball

What I find mildly amusing and ironic is most of the people who are in favor of apologizing for actions done 50+ years ago, are typically the same people who vehemently oppose capital punishment on the grounds that a simple act will not make the initial act of evil go away. Yes, they are very different creatures, but they both have the same goals... restitution and justice.

Since when did executing someone become a simple act? And there are a lot more arguments against capital punishment than it doesn't "make the initial evil go away". To boil an issue with many reasons for opposition down to a single issue is not only unfair, it's incorrect.

Further, I don't find issuing an apology and executing someone to be even remotely comparable. I don't want to turn this into a captial punishment debate, but execution is the utlimate form of punishment, an irreversable enforcement of justice, whereas apologizing is the recognition of an injustice. Saying they're very different creatures is an understatement. They're completely opposite.

[Thunderball]

Originally Posted by BlackEleven

Since when did executing someone become a simple act? And there are a lot more arguments against capital punishment than it doesn't "make the initial evil go away". To boil an issue with many reasons for opposition down to a single issue is not only unfair, it's incorrect.

Further, I don't find issuing an apology and executing someone to be even remotely comparable. I don't want to turn this into a captial punishment debate, but execution is the utlimate form of punishment, an irreversable enforcement of justice, whereas apologizing is the recognition of an injustice. Saying they're very different creatures is an understatement. They're completely opposite.

They're both recognitions of justice that are supposed to carry significant weight in symbolism. Neither provide a great deterrence, and neither provide anything more than a brief warm fuzzy feeling until the realization that nothing has changed occured. Maybe I was going about it the wrong way in explaining that point. Therefore the irony comes from the idea that one "accomplishes something" while the other doesn't. The reality is neither really do.


That is what I was getting at without getting into the merits/issues of capital punishment.

[HOZ]

For some reason people are missing the gist of the article.

It not "making an apology" that is wrong or silly or exhibitionist.

Its when people hundreds of years and/or generations away from the event are making apologiies to the people hundreds of years and/or generations away from the victims of that event.


What relation/guilt/sorrow do either of these peoples have to the original event? NOTHING. It is silly.

[Metro Gnome]

There's no such thing as "racial guilt" just as there's no such thing as "racial inferiority". The fact that some white people engaged in slavery hundreds of years ago doesn't imply responsibility to the white people living now: who have done no such thing and don't advocate it . The fact that I share the skin color of past slave masters is absolutely irrelevant and I won't "apologize" to people who share the skin color of ones who were once slaves. It's important to dismiss racism and properly condemn slavery. But that's not what this is about. in fact, this stuff inverts the concepts of equality and individual responsibility by implying people somehow inherit the sins of their race. Ridiculous.