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Monday, February 5, 2007
I apologize for…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“I apologize for…” “I take responsibility for…” We seem destined to live in the Age of the Empty Gesture — grand apologies for actions that occured in another era, actions that no living American perpetrated and no living American suffered. The emptiness of that gesture is matched by the “I take responsibility” mea culpa that comes without penalty — former U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno for the Branch Davidian disaster being among the most noteworthy.
A Georgia State University law professor, Paul Lombardo, has done a superb job of calling public attention to one of his interests, the involuntary sterilization of about 3,300 prisoners, mental patients and others in state custody between 1937 and 1970. He has persuaded State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, a Decatur Democrat, to introduce a resolution he drafted that calls on the General Assembly to apologize. The resolution has been sent to a House committee chaired by State Rep. Sharon Cooper, a Marietta Republican, who offered three perfectly rational observations: One is that the eugenics movement was “unconscionable.” The other is that people should be aware of history so they don’t repeat its mistakes. And the third is that “I’m not sure I agree with” one generation apologizing for another generation’s actions “when all the parties that were involved are long dead.”
I’m with Cooper. One man’s crusade serves the useful purpose of reminding us that policy decisions, even those thought at the time to serve some desirable public purpose, can have harmful consequences. They were wrong. Don’t repeat the mistake. Do apologies matter? Not when made for the dead to the dead.
