[ketelone]

Of course, we may be guided by a difference in viewpoints, but I see no reasons thus far, why what you say is correct.

I have to confess, while I bear the British people no ill will, I'm no anglophile. And definitely definitely no fan of the British Empire.

In my eyes, it was no better than the Soviet Empire, or the so called thousand year Reich. It used the same methods: Brutality, racial discrimination (for parallels look to the asiatic soviet empire, the jews, the gypsies, the Roma, as in Nazi Germany), subjugation, concentration camps (south africa), selective patronage and intrigue, genocide (bengal famine).

Just because they spoke the same language than us, didnt make them good people.

And to go a step further, although we've been on the same side for the last centuries major wars, doesnt justify anything they did in the colonies.

[Oztrich Boy]

In my eyes, it was no better than the Soviet Empire, or the so called thousand year Reich. It used the same methods: Brutality, racial discrimination (for parallels look to the asiatic soviet empire, the jews, the gypsies, the Roma, as in Nazi Germany), subjugation, concentration camps (south africa), selective patronage and intrigue, genocide (bengal famine).

Just because they spoke the same language than us, didnt make them good people.

But it does make them pretty like the US. For parallels look to Monroe Doctrine, Removal of the Cherokee, "manifest destiny", Nisei internment, Tuskegee Experiment - not even mentioning that slavery thing.

The American Empire behaves as empires always have

America never looks where she treads.
Always her heavy hooves fall,
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
And America never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass on—that is all,
And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
With only our tongues for our swords.

[NZerFromHK]

One interesting thing is from the British perspective the events of 1776 deeply influenced their conducts in the Second British Empire. From the readiness they granted "the Old Commonwealth" like Canada and Australia self-rule in the 1850s which put them irreversibly towards eventual independence, history records showed that the Colonial Office did so out of a fear/desire of not to repeating the same mistakes as in the American Revolutionary wars. Also notice that in the later British colonies, there had never once again been a direct attempt to intervene into the colony's political matters, such as raising taxes on the colonies, from Westminster without prior tacit agreements from the colony's local assemblies.

[fragrant abuse]

I agree the world is better off without the British empire and I think most Brits these days wouldn't argue with that.

The only thing you can say in defence of the British empire is that it could have been a lot worse. In their day, the German, Belgian and Portuguese imperial projects were even more brutal.