But I always thought, "You know how businesses say thank you? With money."
How does government declare intent? Through tax policy and spending.
If I'm the N.C. GOP, I budget $105 million next year for a eugenics apology. That's $35,000 for every living victim, which I'd split over two years.** I'd seriously consider a joint hearing, go quickly to the floor concurrently in the House and Senate and ask the governor to join in from the beginning.
I'm fighting a Democratic argument that I'm callous, and that I'm for the rich. This sounds like a bargain $52.5 million answer to that problem, and North Carolina would be the first state to do it.
I'd also argue this will produce a positive, if small, economic effect. Many of these North Carolinians were targeted for sterilization because they were poor and considered "feeble minded." How much of that money, do you figure, would be spent on food, medicine and medical care in North Carolina?
And that's all beside the fact that the state of North Carolina had these folks cut open and sterilized to improve the human race.
** I must admit not knowing enough about the state's budget rules, but I suspect this General Assembly cannot easily commit money for the 2013-14 budget, because there's an election before then. Something to work around, perhaps.
Update: I didn't know it when I wrote this column, but writers for the John Locke Foundation, a fairly conservative think tank, have argued in favor of sterilization compensation for years. They published a fresh paper on it July 6.
Said John Hood, the Foundation's president:
"I don't understand, honestly, what the contrary argument is. These were state actions taken on behalf of the stat of North Carolina ... that for decades violated the basic rights of nc citizens."
4 comments:
Maybe you can explain how someone can apologize for something they never did? Forcing taxpayers to pay for something they never did isn't an apology. If you want redress, sue those complicit. Maybe even toss them in jail. But forcing every man woman and child in NC to pay $12 in recompense isn't compassion.
Well, you run into statute of limitations that way. Plus, tricking people into the operation aside, this was all legal. It was state-ordered.
So $12 to improve the life of someone your state government screwed over still smells like a bargain to me.
And like I said, it's $100 million in humility and kindness evidence for the GOP, which needs the governor's office in a bad way.
Bargain.
Think about it this way: Everyone of those people paid state taxes - sales taxes, at least. And their government used some of that money to make sure they couldn't have anymore kids.
So maybe it's just a refund.
It's easy to pretend to be compassionate with other people's money. We need to resist that urge. Punish the guilty, leave the innocent alone. You can't right one wrong by committing another.
Again, you're not going to be able to convict people for crimes committed prior to 1975 that weren't actually against the law.
And taking $12 from someone is a pretty different level of wrongness compared to sterilizing someone without telling them.
But I hear you.
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