To the Editor,
I am writing to you today in regards to your article yesterday on Kevin Rudd’s so-called “Sorry Speech”.
There is something fundamentally wrong with apologizing for acts which you did not perpetrate. Would you apologise for your grandfather’s past misdeeds? And if you would, why would that mean anything? If you’re apologising for other’s wrongs, there is one of two things going on. If you’re a public figure, maybe you’re looking for some quick good PR, and don’t even mean what you are saying. I don’t wish to insinuate that this is the motivation behind Kevin Rudd’s speech, however. The other, more likely possibility, is that your ideology is markedly different from that of those who you are apologising for.
Since the latter is almost certainly the case here, I shall address that in further detail. To say “sorry” to the Stolen Generations is to express regret. Regret is a deeply personal emotion, and is a feeling connected to personal actions. We do not feel sorry for the actions of others. We may feel empathy, we may feel pity. But we do not feel sorry.