[A.J.Armitage]

The perfect illustration of jingoism was Jonah Goldburg's idea that we should conquer Africa. It can't really be called patriotic because it would do the United States no good whatsoever. That fact, if I recall correctly, was actually a selling point. It was supposed to be more moral or something if we didn't have a selfish interest. Ayn Rand might have something to say about that, but in any event we'd be screwed now if we'd taken his advice to ship large portions of the military off to Africa.

[Restorer]

The perfect illustration of jingoism was Jonah Goldburg's idea that we should conquer Africa. It can't really be called patriotic because it would do the United States no good whatsoever.

I don't think there was anything jingoistic about this proposal at all. It was to be undertaken not in a mood of nationalistic exaltation, to show the world what a wonderful country the US is, but rather as a dirty job that needed doing to prevent avoidable human suffering.

I don't agree with Jonah about the advisability of such action. Frankly, I suspect he proposed it primarily to stimulate wholesome debate about what could be done about the deterioration of Africa, which is an undeniable fact. It was quite successful in this regard. (Not that anybody has noticed Africa since September.)

I believe that one long-term result of the present war will be some form of (disguised) recolonisation of much of the third world.

[annalex]

Jonah Goldburg's idea that we should conquer Africa.

Ha. I was just about to comment that the sorry state of the British intelligentsia in late 40's, described by Orwell, is directly responsible for their willful and outright criminal abandonment of the British Empire. We may end up recolonizing the Third World just to pick up the mess that Orwell's masochistic nationalists had left.

Ayn Rand might have something to say about that

An invasion of a nation that has no representative government is just: Defense of Liberty: Just Intervention