Roger’s Rules

February 16th, 2008 5:00 am

Always apologize, always explain, or, Why Intellectuals like Genocide

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.”

But the larger question is, why is Mr. Rudd or his countrymen to blame? And what sort of expiation does he expect from his “comprehensive and moving apology”? Benjamin Disraeli is one eminent statesman credited with the advice “Never apologize, never explain.” (Sometimes emended to “Never apologize, never explain, never repeat the mistake.”) Whatever the limitations of the policy, it at least avoids the cloying, hothouse atmosphere of unremitting pseudo-contrition that oozes like a fetid gas into the crowded chambers in which liberals rub up against one another in their little orgies of self-congratulation. (”We are guilty, guilty, guilty, and therefore virtuous.”) Somehow, I cannot quite picture the stalwart John Howard, Australia’s last Prime Minister, colluding in such festivals of purgation and limitless apology.

Not, of course, that apology is ever enough. It must be accompanied by penance, i.e., the taxpayer’s–that is your–money, and gobs of it. This is the kind of sentence that The New York Times specializes in: “But for some people, Mr. Rudd’s apology will not have gone far enough because he has ruled out setting up a government fund to compensate the victims of the policies that led to the Stolen Generations.”

A few years ago, the Australian historian Keith Windschuttle published a book called The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. The burden of this excellent work (reviewed here in The New Criterion by the eminent historian Geoffrey Blainey) is to show that the received wisdom about the founding of Australia–that it involved the European genocide of the native Aboriginal population–is a myth. Europeans did kill some Aborigines–some 120 Tasmanian Aborigines, for example. But then, the natives killed a like number of Europeans. So it goes.

Mr. Windschuttle’s book is a work of meticulous scholarship that patiently sifts through the historical record to show exactly how the myth got started, how it was perpetuated, and how an entire academic industry grew up to nurture and propagate a false view of the Australian founding. You might think that a man who had discharged this service to the truth and brought his fellow Australians the good news that their country was not, as they had always been told, founded on genocide would be greeted as a hero. Fat chance. Instead, Mr. Windschuttle was greeted by howls of rage and a cataract of calumny by academics who couldn’t bear the thought that their ancestors weren’t the guilty imperialists and racists they’d always assumed they were. The reaction to The Fabrication of Aboriginal History was as predicable as it was inadvertently amusing. (See John Dawson’s rave review in Washout: On the academic response to the fabrication of Aboriginal history.)

The interesting question is Why? Why were intellectuals so hostile to Mr. Windschuttle’s book? Why were they so wedded–irrationally wedded–to the idea that their country was founded on genocide? Why, in short, did they desperately crave that story to be true? More generally, why are intellectuals–not only Australian intellectuals–constitutionally drawn to such dismal fabrications? (Scratch an American intellectual and you’ll get a similar tale about European genocide of American Indians.)

Such questions formed the theme of Theodore Dalrymple excellent meditation on The Fabrication of Aboriginal History over at the web site New English Review. Mr. Dalrymple’s essay bears the provocative title “Why Intellectuals Like Genocide.” I won’t be giving too much away if I say that the answer–a large part of it, anyway–has to do with that unwieldy and insatiably voracious thing: intellectuals’ self-regard.

The dispute was not just a matter of the interpretation of the contents of old newspapers in Hobart libraries: it went to the very heart of the intelligentsia’s self-conception as society’s conscience and natural leaders.

A conflict over the veracity of footnotes was thus also a conflict also over the proper place of intellectuals in modern society. And Windschuttle was vastly more often right about the footnotes than he was wrong. This was quite unforgivable of him.

“Why Intellectuals Like Genocide” is a classic. Read the whole thing here.

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22 Comments

1. David Hartmann:

Roger,
Thank you very much for sending out these postings, and especially for including the links to the articles and books you mention. Most interesting, and saves me alot of browsing time.

Feb 17, 2008 - 10:08 am 2. Richard Landes:

after the Waco debacle, the FBI said: “We didn’t do anything wrong and we won’t do it again.”

Feb 17, 2008 - 6:36 pm 3. Dark Helmet:

There seems to be a common link between liberals and the need to destroy anything that has brought about progress. Conflict can be defined as two seeking the same space. Life is unfair, one side won, one side lost. Nature dictates that those who adapt, survive. If these self proclaimed fantastic minds spent as much time looking ahead, they might be less inclined to try to destroy what took things out of the bush amd more time into making everyone feel included. That might just cost soros and heinz the election on this side of the pond.

Feb 18, 2008 - 4:58 am 4. Romat Rast:

Mr. Landes,
The FBI should have added, “unless we have to.”

Feb 18, 2008 - 8:32 am 5. Jeb:

Scratch an American intellectual and you’ll get a similar tale about European genocide of American Indians.

Are you saying here that you believe that Europeans were not responsible for the genocide of various Native American tribes?

Feb 18, 2008 - 8:50 am 6. Sissy Willis:

Beautiful stuff.

As you yourself wrote in your 1996 New Criterion review of Windschuttle’s The Killing of History, “They abandon the constraints of empirical truth in the name of liberation. But what they wind up with is not freedom but a new and more terrible servitude.”

Feb 18, 2008 - 9:29 am 7. Insufficiently Sensitive:

Jeb:

European microbes had more to do with American Indian mortality than any human European activist. And while you’re looking for subjects for a blame festival, look at the internecine slaughter between the tribes themselves. Slaughter, slavery, torture, cannibalism – you could be blaming for a month and never find a European in your sights.

Feb 18, 2008 - 9:44 am 8. PapayaSF:

Way back when, Western intellectuals were Christians who believed in original sin, Man’s fallen nature, etc. Now they are secular, and find emotional satisfaction in historical crimes (real, exaggerated, or imaginary) of their ancestors about which they can feel guilty. Coincidence?

Feb 18, 2008 - 10:42 am 9. Jrm:

“We didn’t do anything wrong and we won’t do it again. Unless we have to. And next time, we kill all the witnesses.”

Sorry, I woke up cynical this morning.

Feb 18, 2008 - 10:56 am 10. Letalis Maximus, Esq.:

Hell Pilgrim, John “The Duke” Wayne (a/k/a Marion Morrison) knew that:

“Never apologize. Its a sign of weakness.”

Feb 18, 2008 - 11:03 am 11. Greg Toombs:

InSen:

I think these intellectuals would happily accept the proxy of disease as evidence substantiating the charge, regardless of the amount of research contradicting their accusations of European genocide.

“I exist, therefore I am to blame.”

Or something. Maybe “you exist, therefore you are to blame”, or “your ancestors existed, therefore you are to blame”? I guess I’m not intellectual enough to keep up.

The ability to keep moving the goalposts of intellectual honesty seems to be a hallmark of leftists, whether ‘intellectual’ or not.

There’s got to be meds for that.

Feb 18, 2008 - 11:54 am 12. Curly Smith:

Isn’t Mr. Rudd’s apology appropriate given his world view that there is a finite amount of success/wealth in the world? Isn’t Mr. Rudd just admitting that his success/wealth was stolen the Aborigines? So now Mr. Rudd has a choice… he can either give the wealth/success back to the rightful owners or he can apologize. I’m shocked, shocked I say!, that he chose the option that costs him nothing and conveniently leaves the impression that he has done something admirable.

Feb 18, 2008 - 11:56 am 13. Shannon Love:

C.S. Lewis observed that those who confess to communal sins don’t seek to reveal their own sins but their neighbors.

Likewise, Leftist who apologize for past sins don’t see themselves for apologizing for the sins of their ideological forbearers but rather as apologizing for the sins of the forbearers of their ideological competitors. Apologies for historical wrongs are nothing but a means of turning historical wrongs (real or imagined) into weapons against their present day opponents.

Like more things Leftist do, its an intensely selfish and self-serving act that benefits no one but a few power crazed articulate intellectuals and their wanna be followers.

Feb 18, 2008 - 12:37 pm 14. ic:

Mr. Rudd is Clintonesque.

Feb 18, 2008 - 12:46 pm 15. Assistant Village Idiot:

Good editorial, good comments. I would piggyback on Insufficiently Sensitive’s remark to Jeb. European disease accounted for 90% (with estimates up to 95%) of Native American deaths; don’t jump to quick conclusions about the rest, either. The book 1491 is quite interesting on this.

The reference to Lewis is apt – confessing the sins of others is a particularly hypocritical method of accusation.

Feb 18, 2008 - 1:16 pm 16. Alex Bensky:

In his excellent “A History of Warfare,” John Keegan remarks that of all the cultures he studied, none had elevated cruelty and sadism to the levels of meso- and North American Indians.

And they devised that all before they ever saw a European.

Feb 18, 2008 - 4:42 pm 17. OregonJon:

Roger focuses on liberal fantasies about the lost generation, but there is more to rue about the treatment of aborigines than just that. The first ever Australian census in 1911 counted only those who were 50% or more white. It was as if the aborigines did not exist.

At some later point, I’m unsure when, aborigines began to be counted in the actual census but it was not until 1967, when the constitution was amended that aborigines were counted when it came to determining how many seats each state received in parliament.

The point here is not to debate whether Ruud’s apology was wise, but there certainly were factual reasons to do something. One such step was made in 1985 when the ownership of Ayers Rock was returned to a local aborigine tribe. Have there been or will there be more such returns, or is White Australia now able to hide behind Ruud’s words and keep valued assets for themselves? Perhaps in a later column Mr. Kimball can bless us with his comment.

Feb 18, 2008 - 5:24 pm 18. tanstaafl:

…the cloying, hothouse atmosphere of unremitting pseudo-contrition that oozes like a fetid gas into the crowded chambers in which liberals rub up against one another in their little orgies of self-congratulation.

Good one. Orgies of self- congratulation pretty well nails it.

The main function of the victim (aka “he who receives the apology”) is to serve as the excuse for the orgy.

Love Theodore Dalrymple. Planet is in great need of such commons sense.

Feb 18, 2008 - 5:26 pm 19. John D:

Apolgies are nice. But Rudd is wise not to go beyond that.

Here in Oregon the Federal goverment bought out the Klamath Indian reservation in 1954. Before it happened it was put to a vote by the tribe. They voted for it and members that didn’t want to take the buyout were allowed land and a continuation of their payments from timber sales.

Now, in 2008, the Federal government is providing the funds for the tribe to purchase back their former reservation.

So we paid them for their land in 1954 and in 2008 we are, in effect, buying that same land back for them.

1954, we paid; 2008 we pay again.

Don’t make deals like this. When I was a kid it was called “Indian giving”.

When the someone starts planning to atone for past “mistakes” just point out that they’ve had their apology. What do they want?

Feb 18, 2008 - 11:57 pm 20. william:

The liberals are willing to apologize for the murders committed by imperialists, but genocide in the 20th Century was, with the exception of the Nazis, committed by Marxists and third world nationalists. Will the children of Theodore White apologize for their father’s support of Mao. Beatrice Webb went to Russia and marvelled that so many bourgeoise were willing to volunteer their labor building the White Sea Canal. (100,000 died in that futile endeavor.) Will her family apologize for her mistakes in perception? In the 20th Century, many liberals either ignored or supported the wholesale murder of class enemies, imperialist sympathizers, etc. Did any liberal hedge their support of N Vietnam because of their record of torture of American POW’s and targeted assisinations of S Vietnamese officials? I think many crime were committed in the name of imperialism. But in my lifetime they are insignificant compared to the crimes of the anti-imperialists.

Feb 19, 2008 - 10:41 am 21. Jeb:

Insufficient and Assistant,

European disease accounted for 90% (with estimates up to 95%) of Native American deaths

Far from all of that was accidental (Small pox infected blankets etc).
Beyond that there was plenty of rounding up and killing of the native population that remained after disease had decimated their numbers.
That Native American tribes warred with one another does not absolve their massacre and subjugation by an outside party.
We needn’t clothe ourselves in sackcloth and flagellate ourselves in shame over the actions of our ancestors, but we should not deny their sins either.

I await other articles in this same vein. Perhaps Mr. Kimball with your support could regale us with the equally valid arguments about why slavery in America wasn’t actually a bad thing for the Africans who were brought here and kept in bondage and how good it was for their decendants.

Feb 20, 2008 - 12:55 am 22. Maggie's Farm:

Apologies

Roger wonders what the Aussies are apologizing for. I think it’s just a passing fad.

Feb 20, 2008 - 5:46 am