Always apologize, always explain, or, Why Intellectuals like Genocide By Roger Kimball

Australia’s recent decision to apologize to the Aborigines—it was, said The New York Times, “a comprehensive and moving apology for past wrongs”—was front-page news. But why? Kevin Rudd, Australia’s new Prime Minsiter, said his country would act “to remove a great stain from the nation’s soul.” But what, precisely, had Australia done to the Aborigines? Well, everything. Australia is run by white folks now, isn’t it? And then there is the issue of attempting to improve the lot of Aborigines by encouraging assimilation. This was the so-called “Stolen Generations” controversy. The Times says “tens of thousands” of children were removed, “sometimes forcibly,” from their families and resettled. I’d like to second the historian Andrew Bolt’s challenge to produce a list of even ten names of children who were resettled by Australian authorities. It’s not that I doubt some children were removed from their families—e.g., a 13-year-old called Dolly, who was taken into the care of the State after being “found seven months pregnant and penniless, working for nothing on a station.”

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