No child is responsible for the sins of his or her parents. None. How can you be held accountable for that which someone else did at a time when you either didn’t exist or were too small and powerless to stop?
I agree. Navel-gazing (for a lifetime) is NEVER the answer.
But such is the nature of children, even adult children, to blame themselves.
It’s what molesters count on, for one thing. It’s a human tendency.
Well put.
For all their undeniable evil, the Nazis didn’t do a single thing that hasn’t been common down through human history. Only the scale of their evil was greater than routine, and you can make a good argument that even the scale has been considerably exaggerated in a historical context.
In any case, being ashamed of your ancestry is at least as idiotic as being arrogant about it. You are responsible for your own actions, not those of your ancestors.
I’ve always found the notion that the Germans as a people should be held eternally guilty for their crimes against the Jews pretty funny.
If taken literally, the same principle, although at a considerably greater time difference, would make the Jews of today bear the guilt for the death of Christ. Not the sole guilt, of course, but the NT account makes it clear a lot of Jews, particularly their leaders, were heavily involved.
The Nazi persecution of the Jews had little to do with their being “Christ-killers,” but the accusation was fertile soil for antipathy in Christendom for well over a thousand years.
“How can you be held accountable for that which someone else did at a time when you either didn’t exist or were too small and powerless to stop?”
Doctrine of inherited guilt. FWIW, I agree with you.
Too bad some of these souls take such tortured and pointless paths to expiate their percieved guilt. The grand-niece of Goering mentioned in the article sounds like a typical, emotional leftist. The poor fool even sterilized herself to help rid the world of her genetics.
Sorry, woman, it’s called sin. Yours will be more than enough to condemn you without borrowing guilt from the freaks in your family. BTW, everyone’s got somebody in the family tree that goes unmentioned in polite talk.
Her thinking is a common theme with lefties, though; Genetic causal arguments for aberent and cirminal behavior and the legal notion of collective guilt. Nice tools to marginalize and punish unpopular people who do not subscribe to the same kinds of nonsense.
Funny thing, this woman rejecting her great-uncle’s philosophies and then taking them in a new and self-destructive direction.
Too bad there are many who believe we are still accountable to slavery.