Curiously enough, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas (of all people) has actually introduced a proposed apology to Indians. I doubt it will get anywhere, and many Indians are skeptical of the whole notion (“Hey sorry we stole all your land and tried to exterminate you. We’re not planning on giving it back or anything, but we feel REAL bad about the whole thing”). Frankly, I think most of us would be satisfied if the US government honored even one of its treaties. They could even pick which one and surprise us!

I think you have the distinction right in para 4, but it doesn’t seem to me support for your position in para 1.

Rather it seems to me to lead to the view that, if you’re happy to belong to a community because of its goodness or greatness, you should feel sorry about actions by that community that are not good or great, and therefore should support an apology from the community for such actions, as well as steps to repair the damage, to which you, as a member of the community should contribute resources and effort if needed.

As you say, none of this implies any personal glory (or disgrace) on your part.

Stepping well outside my competence, I’ll suggest that Bernard Williams’ idea of moral luck may be relevant here. If any philosophically inclined CT-ers are still reading, feel free to set me straight.

To take a concrete example: Germans who’d reached adulthood shortly before and during the Third Reich can be held culpable, each in the degree to which they supported the Third Reich, no more, no less. To say in 1945 that “the Germans are to blame for the War” might be useful rhetorically, or as a handy shorthand for an endless sequence of differently qualified statements, but it couldn’t mean “all Germans, each to the same extent” and be literally true.

In addition to what I think is a shaky logical basis, assertions that people are collectively responsible, or guilty, or what have you also have a pretty nasty history as excuses for mistreatment of others.

(To clear up a possible source of confusion: when we speak of pride in one’s community, nation, culture, we often mean simply a pleasure we take in contemplating that community. The community is good or great in some sense of those words, and in consequence we’re happy to belong to it. (I have no quarrel with that pleasure.) At other times, we mean a pleasure we take in ourselves because we’re members of that community. My being a Roman, a Venetian, an American, somehow imparts some glory to me by virture of membership in the club. I see no merit to this sort of thing; I expected I’d find more agreement on this point here.)

The rest of us are pretty much agreed on (1)-(4), but want to push you on the question of whether you can, in general, avoid pride and shame in the actions of your community while not repudiating your membership of that community (an admittedly ambiguous community).

Dave keeps shooting right through his own foot and hitting mine, but y’all can reject his bluster and silliness without rejecting the bottom line question: how do we repay this debt?

Look, I’m no kind of political scientist, so if my ideas are internally contradictory in some way, let me know.

Also, sg’s comment about GPS-enabled walkabout is delightful. Perhaps the shortest path would be to find some Aboriginal spokespeople and ask them what they want, and then try to monitor what sort of grumbling their answers produce…

I think I can guess what your objection to multiculturalism is – it’s nothing so sophisticated as a belief that the policy is a good-hearted failure. Maybe you don’t like the thought of living alongside people who have successfully integrated into your society and retained their own culture?

I can’t see one, which seems to lead to the view that you are claiming that community itself is an obsolete concept.

Anyway, when it all works out splendidly, you can say “I told you so”, and I will happily agree.

So I don’t think you have much to add here.

Like, for example, the traditional Mesolithic cultures of Western Europe, which adopted agriculture, etc. thanks to ideas/tech/people from the Middle East?

Honestly, it’s an classic example of ‘born on third base, think they hit a triple’, just on a global and multimillenial scale . . .

Does it really make sense (given a “modern,” that is, individual notion of responsibility—actually a notion that goes back at least to Ezekiel) to be proud of the achievements of your community and forebears? Forebears aside, how does your community bestow glory on you, unless you’ve taken part in some admirable achievements of same; if not, what do you have to boast about? And if you’re not entitled to pride in those cases, then why feel shame about crimes you haven’t perpetrated? (If you’re an ongoing and willing beneficiary of those crimes, I would agree that you should; but otherwise, why?)

I’ll add (in the hope of not being misunderstood again) that where the perpetrators of the oppressions in question are still alive, their responsibility (and their obligation to atone) are of course unimpaired.

More interesting (though still problematic if guilt and responsibility are indidividual) is the question what position should be taken by a government that’s persisted in substantially the same form since the time when representatives of that government committed the crimes in question. If the wrongdoers are out of office, and their policies no longer in effect, there’s still enough institutional continuity that it makes sense for the current leader to say: what the government did before was wrong, and we’re certainly not doing it now; but should he apologize? I still think that’s an open question.

Part of the emotional satisfaction of such an apology (both to victims and to persons related (however remotely)to the perpetrators) will be the belief (quite mistaken, I think) that those related to the perpetrators are culpable simply by virtue of being related. Is there some more rational basis for such institutional apologies?