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0 pointscoldtea12y ago0 comments

>What absolute nonsense. So many countries have committed atrocities on a similar level, and many more recently than the British empire. Should the Norwegians be crippled by guilt for the actions of the vikings? Should the Americans be crippled by guilt for crimes against the native people? Should the Japanese and Germans be crippled by guilt for atrocities committed in WW2? People don't live in the past.

Yes, they should be crippled by guilt. Guilt is good -- it prevents you doing the same bad things again and gives you a perspective of what you did.

People might not live in the past, but countries carry their past with them.

The fact that the actual people that started the Vietnam war have died, doesn't mean that the country and the organisations that they worked in died with them. Those should carry the guilt forward. (Of course, instead they usually carry forward the same long term strategic planning that led to their previous attrocities).

What I mean is, countries are not discreet: they are continuous. A country has a history like a person has. Its history doesn't die and start from zero with each generation.

That's even an accepted norm of international relation even when the change inside a country is from a state to another (e.g the US after independence) etc. It's called "succession of state")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_of_states

Now, of course the truth is that they are not crippled by guilt at all -- they never stopped doing crimes on humanity and on their own citizens ever. Look what they are doing to the native americans in Dakota still. Look at Zimmerman.

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lewispollard12y ago

> Yes, they should be crippled by guilt. Guilt is good -- it prevents you doing the same bad things again and gives you a perspective of what you did. > People might not live in the past, but countries carry their past with them.

I would argue that it's the leaders and governments who should be crippled by guilt. It's useless for me to carry the guilt of the British empire when my ancestors were working class and had no influence over those decisions (and, in fact, were Irish when you go back more than a few generations - should I be angry at Britain in that case?)

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