Posted on 06/26/2026 7:47:22 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Today, the word colonialism is treated almost like a curse word. Mention it in a classroom, on social media, or in many political circles, and you’ll immediately hear words like exploitation, racism, oppression, genocide, and theft. For many people—especially younger generations—colonialism has become history’s ultimate villain, the so-called “original sin” from which nearly every modern problem supposedly springs.
As a conservative, I’ve always thought this view was far too simplistic.
Now, before anyone starts sharpening their pitchforks, let me be clear: colonial powers absolutely committed injustices. Wars were fought. Peoples were conquered. Resources were taken. Some populations were devastated. These are historical facts, and serious people should acknowledge them honestly.
But history is rarely a Disney movie with obvious heroes and villains. The uncomfortable truth is that conquest, expansion, and empire are as old as humanity itself. Long before Europeans sailed across oceans, empires were rising and falling all over the world. African kingdoms conquered neighboring tribes. Arab empires expanded across North Africa and the Middle East. The Mongols swept across Asia and Europe. The Aztecs ruled over subject peoples through military force and tribute. The Romans practically turned conquest into an art form.
Human beings have always expanded when they had the power to do so. What makes Western colonialism different is not simply that it conquered territory.
What makes it unique is that the very civilization responsible for much of modern colonialism also produced the ideas that eventually challenged and condemned it: individual rights, constitutional government, abolitionism, freedom of speech, and the belief that all people possess inherent dignity.
That irony is almost never discussed.
In modern culture, colonialism is often presented as though it produced nothing except suffering. But history is more complicated than that.
Alongside exploitation came institutions and systems …
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The thing is Marx never thought Russia was a good place for Marxism, as it was too agricultural. He envisioned it in the industrialized countries, like Germany and Britain (where he is buried).
Everything in the modern world was from the West.
Communism, Democracy, Human Rights...and all the inventions that people in civilized countries use every day.....hell, the joint stock company was one of the West’s most important inventions.
The book does a good job of explaining the positive side of British Colonialism, and explains many of the tragedies of the rush to condemn colonialism, which was primarily a Marxist push.
The problem is that the Third World failed to adopt the moral basis of capitalism. They didn't need to invent anything; the recipe was handed to them.
The squawking is to distract from the fact that broken cultures (and in the U.S., subcultures) have failed and need to pin the blame on something besides themselves.
We had gone to India to look at a rig. I was in line with an Aussie associate while we waited to clear customs. The Aussie, in front of me, came to the agent who stamped his passport and then said, “You have compliment for me?” The Aussie says, “Nice shirt mate.” and walked away.
One of my best laughs but I had to stifle it until I got my passport stamped as well.
There was news articles out about it... My daughter’s recent graduation from UofM Ann Arbor with for Masters. The first15 minutes of the ceremony, 100+ students and a packed house of visitors, the Dean of the School up there apologizing the “Indigenous people of this Land - ...for occupying the territory of their Ancestors...”. I could not fkng believe it!! If my daughter wasn’t there I would have stood up and and got out as many insulting invectives as I possibly could before I was hauled away by security...
What a complete moron that woman was!!
Everything in the modern world was from the West.
Now the Muslims have the $$$ to in pursuit of jihad so their goal of establishing the worldwide caliphate is now realistic.
Shutting down the Strait of Hormuz is not a bad strategy. Now the Muslims won't be able to sell oil.
We need to end the war in Ukraine so we don't have to sanction Russia.
And we can gradually increase the output from Venezuela.
Someone who is anti-colonialist in a place like a sub-Saharan African country should be consistent and do without anything discovered or invented by Westerners—electricity, clean water, sanitation, literacy, the internal combustion engine, trains, airplanes, computers, modern medicine, etc.
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I’ve read diaries and journals pretty much testimony from colonized peoples
Particularly those by England France the Dutch and Germans
The average colonized lauds the colonizing influence as preferable
Let’s remember people these entities colonized weren’t exactly constitutional republics with any emphasis on the individual
I’d strike the Congo naturally but that was more a private economic colonization and the continuous warring tribes also had a big part in that endeavor
Yes. The Belgium Congo, from what I have read, was one of the worst administered of the European colonies.
What does it mean for a civilisation to turn against itself? In this episode, Quillette's Zoe Sankey speaks with philosopher and author Benedict Beckeld — whose 2019 Quillette essay on oikophobia remains one of our site's most popular pieces — about the recurring historical phenomenon he has spent his career documenting: the tendency of successful Western societies to denigrate their own culture, institutions, and inheritance.
Colonialism = We win, you lose.
How many young Americans believe that theUSA wasa colonial power instead of the fact that we were the colonies of England?
If Marxism hadn’t been in vogue in the West when the world rapidly decolonized (1918 - 1960) the freed colonies might have done better. At least they would have been economically literate.
One thing I forgot was the reasonable colonizers also brought huge advances in convenience and technology and medical etc which improved the lives of the colonized
The English and others also installed governmental political and administrative infrastructure that for sure improved lives
Ex=British colonies seem better than their neighbors in the same areas.
...and massed fire.
Strength = Peace.
Been my personal experience for sure
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