[extraisland]

> Well, I wouldn't say punishment is exactly fair

That is how many of the left talk about it. Some are more coy than others, but nonetheless that is the theme.

I certainly don't care for it and I certainly doesn't endear me to anyone making the argument.

> But your government did not pay for reparations either, while at the same time, your government does hold other countries for doing so in their own wars (validly so).

So? The vast majority of the people in country had nothing to do with those events.

[crikeykangaroo]

Well... Too bad the government is (supposedly?) democratically elected by its people? Such actions may have consequences.

[extraisland]

That unfortunately is a common fallacy that people engage in.

In the first chapter of "Anatomy of the State" this idea is utterly demolished.

> With the rise of democracy, the identification of the State with society has been redoubled, until it is common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every tenet of reason and common sense such as, “we are the government.” The useful collective term “we” has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If “we are the government,” then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also “voluntary” on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that “we owe it to ourselves”; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is “doing it to himself” and, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have “committed suicide,” since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree.