Sorry, but not sorry enough

Oscar Wilde wrote in 1888 “we cannot re-write the whole of history for the purpose of gratifying our moral sense of what should be”. Indeed, scoring easy moral victories over dead people and basking in our own self-righteousness is unflattering, and all the more so when contemporary ills are so pressing and dire. The Left’s Holy Trinity of race, class and gender is particularly noxious as it simplistically encourages inter- and intra-generational victimhood among groups based upon their physical characteristics.

Where are the Sorry Days and apologies for other people damaged and distraught by yesteryear’s perceived policy mistakes? My grandmothers, and thousands of others, lost some of their children from hopelessly lax and lenient drink-driving laws, seemingly as absurd to us today as any passé social program..

What of the Australian government’s complicity in the removal of 10,000-odd British children to Australia in the decades after World War II?

Others too have been scarred by too-slow scientific and social progress. Yet, it seems that those groups who don’t fit neatly into the Holy Trinity are not as highly regarded. In fact, surely by definition any piece of legislation or common law principle that now applies, or one that no longer applies, is evidence of past abuse, and is thus deserving of an “apology”.

To those who say an apology is pragmatic and “heals the nation”, I say elevating particular group grievances in the name of “healing” some “national story” is, frankly, fascism-lite and will ultimately foster a more fractured and fractious society. Moreover, time is in fixed supply and the fuss over historical apologies wastes intellectual and physical effort. Apologise for all history, or none at all.

Let’s apologise for the present, not the past, and provide genuine redress. Far from being hesitant in removing Aborigines from their dysfunctional surrounds, we should implement the wholesale education and integration of Aborigines into modern society, as some Aborigines themselves suggested in 1938.