So would the Germans argue. And the Blacks would claim benefits for "deprived opportunity to improve."
And from there, it would go nowhere.
I don't know how many exchanges it would take to admit that the past is the past, and nothing else can be done to change it. Non-quantifiable losses cannot be reparated, is what I'd think regarding the matter in question.
Oh come off it. I can still remember my aunts in Mississipi taling about “the war.” Like This or that thing happens during” the war.” This would be about 1942 and they weren’t talking about World War II, or World War I, or the Spani-sh-Americans War. They were talking about the events of the siege of Vicksburg by a Union Army. Their mother was a young child living in the caves cut in the side of a hill, and their uncvles, a Choctow indian named John Smith was killed during the siege after leaving her and her mothr with some food. Got his head blown off by a cannon ball or something. Once upon a time I could find his grave. Now that is history as people know it, not as history professors do.
The past is the past, If I robbed someone today, 48 hours from, can I use the excuse "past is the past" when my victim is around?.
I don't know what the time frame should be, should it be centries, decades, or just minuits, and hours?
Germany can say the past is the past, Iraq, after being booted out of Kuwait, could have said the same thing the next year. The question, should you do something that is wrong, or illegal, thus creating a situation where you get to enjoy the benefit from those prior bad acts, and dismiss any naysaying with "the past is the past". In theory, I can rob people, and argue that moments later.
Poland is saying "not so fast", and is not willing to acknowledge any special greater equity in such population weighted voting, given the way population differences came about in Europe. It is saying "keep one vote per state", knowing full well it underweights the bigger countries. It is saying they should be underweighted in population terms, that they should regard and treat smaller states as their equals, not as junior or second class members of the EU.
Poland is itself a middling country by EU standards. The little ones that benefit the most by one country, one vote are the lowland countries, scandanavia, and the smaller eastern European countries (Poland is much larger than the others in eastern Europe, in population terms).