Groups

 

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The biological continuity of the generations lends plausibility to the notion of group compensation—but only if guilt can be inherited. Otherwise there are simply windfall gains and windfall losses among contemporaries, according to the accident of their antecedents. Moreover, few people would accept this as a general principle to be applied consistently, however much they may advocate it out of compassion (or guilt) over the fate of particular unfortunates. No one would advocate that today’s Jews are morally entitled to put today’s Germans in concentration camps, in compensation for the Nazi Holocaust. Most people would not only be horrified at any such suggestion but would also regard it as a second act of gross immorality, in no way compensating for the first, but simply adding to the sum total of human sins.--Sowell

If you get a creepy feeling about "collective guilt" and "inherited guilt"--as if it is a watered-down obverse version of the old "national soul"--you are right. These collectivists never seem to have confidence in the unifying, imaginary factors they concoct, they always resort to an enemy to congeal those factors. "Collective" and "inherited" qualities are no different than the sins of the Kulaks, or the Jews, or the genetic inferiority of whoever you want to invade and/or eliminate. Individual responsibility and value are nowhere to be seen.