Why isn't Britain apologizing for what they have done to this world? (From Quora)

When a question is self-contradictory, it does not help our understanding.

Britain is a singular noun which tends to be used as shorthand for Great Britain, the island which is in itself part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. “They” is a plural pronoun and has no point of reference within the question.

Since the inanimate is presumably blameless, one is left to surmise that the persons intended by “they” may be the inhabitants of the aforementioned island, presumably the living ones, since the dead ones are in no position to apologise for anything. However, it is far from clear what the present inhabitants of Britain are alleged to have done.

Apologies only make sense when offered by the perpetrator of an offence to the victim. One cannot meaningfully apologise for things one has not done, (unless one ought to have done them, in which case we speak of sins of omission). Nor can one meaningfully apologise for what someone else has done. If offenders wish to apologise, they can apologise for themselves. If they do not wish to apologise, then no one else has the standing to apologise on their behalf.

No one is morally obliged to take responsibility for the behaviour of earlier generations. The present generation does not deserve credit for the good actions, nor blame for the bad actions, of earlier generations.

Reparations for bad actions that took place centuries ago cannot be required of current populations. In any case, it would be next to impossible to separate current populations into those who are and are not descended from the alleged perpetrators. To give just one example, what sense does it make to demand compensation be paid by descendants of an oppressed English factory worker of the late eighteenth century to descendants of an oppressed plantation slave of the late eighteenth century? It should be needless to point out that far more of the current British population are descended from factory hands than from capitalists.

As Cicero said, “O tempora! O mores!” We cannot retrospectively impose our values on the past and hope to emerge from that abstract process with anything resembling a fair judgement. Iconoclasts who think that, by erasing visible signs and symbols of the past, they will achieve anything positive, are simply deluded. You cannot punish the dead; they are immune to your rancour. You can only increase the likelihood that the living will forget the mistakes of the past and hence, through ignorance, increase the risk of repetitions of those errors in the future. In short, one man’s current virtue signalling is another man’s unforgivable cultural vandalism.

For good or ill, the past is gone. The present and the future have more than enough challenges for the living.