Congratulations jgrahamc!<p>(It was his campaign to effectiveness of which many, including me, were sceptical.)<p>Further discussion: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=816217" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=816217</a>
We know that Gordon Brown has no personal moral responsibility for the prosecution of Alan Turing but has nevertheless apologized to Turing, a person who no longer exists. But now everyone feels better and at no cost to themselves. This is a great bargain whereby one can score brownie points to promote one’s moral stature. The urge to prepare a list (it'll be a long one) of suitable future recipients of our moral largesse.will be irresistible.
Congratulations to all of us who bravely rallied around the cause of a dead man, persuading the British government to do something that has no real meaning to it and then celebrating our common victory over, er, something-or-another. I'm not sure what we defeated or cause we moved forward, but it sure felt great!<p>Let's keep up the good work! We have a long list of horrible deeds done in the past to dead people by other dead people, and there's no limit to the amount of patting ourselves on the back we can achieve. After all, we are so morally superior to all of those folk, and it's time we told ourselves that.<p>Never mind that slavery still exists in the world, or imprisonment for gays, or genocide, or female genital mutilation. No point in addressing or doing something about actual, real evils that we can make an impact on. Nope! When you can score easy symbolic points, all of that real action seems kind of silly. Let's hear it for symbolism over substance! </sarcasm><p>As a person of European descent, I would like to take this opportunity to request that the Italian government apologize for the Romans keeping so many of our ancestors as slaves. This is a wrong that's gone on way too long, and something superficial and symbolic must immediately be done so that I can feel better about it.