Who's Sorry Now?

I've always wondered why we should apologize for something we didn't do. Why should we have to say, "I'm sorry" for something that happened years ago, something which we ourselves would never have done in a million years.

Like the Japanese in internment camps. The mistreatment of some children in some residential schools. The institutionalization of Albertans who didn't meet a certain mental standard, or the sterilization of these same folks.

We realize now, with 20/20 hindsight, that some horrible injustices were perpetrated on innocent and underserving victims by men without consciences. Horrible indeed.

But why do WE have to apologize? Why do WE have to pay? It's not my fault, I wouldn't have done it that way if it had been my choice. I didn't make it happen, I am appalled that it did. So why am I apologizing and saying I'm sorry?

The other day people were praising Pam Barrett posthumously for taking up the cause of those who'd been sterilized as a result of the Alberta Eugenics legislation, in place from 1928 until 1972.

I feel bad that some people were institutionalized and/or sterilized when they shouldn't have been. But that's how things were done back then; that doesn't make it right, that's just the way it was. Obviously it wasn't perceived as a horrendous thing, for it took over 40 years to repeal the law. Why wasn't the practice stopped decades earlier?

Despite all the accolades to the contrary, I don't think it was terribly accurate or wise of Pam Barrett to insist that we should pay these people whatever their lawyers determined they could get, especially when said lawyers were certain to get a goodly portion of it, "it" being taxpayers money -- your money and my money. We who had nothing to do with the wrong that was committed, are the ones to pay. Who's going to apologize to us?

Aside from apologizing for something I didn't do, and paying for something I didn't cause, there's the underlying notion that money solves everything. Like, even if you got your balls hacked off you'd be able to maintain an otherwise regular life with all the settlement money. How come nobody has to apologize for that big lie?