[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

[A.J.Armitage]

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

You quoted me out of context. I was talking about the idea that colonialism is more virtuous if we don't gain from it. Rand wasn't big on altruism, as I recall. On either the thread you linked to or one like it, she was quoted as saying that a free country has the right to attack an unfree one, and so the only consideration that matters is whether it's in the free country's interest. That consideration still matters. Their need for a decent government doesn't constitute on obligation on our part to provide them with one.

Take up the White Man's burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--

Go, bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait, in heavy harness,

On fluttered folk and wild--

Your new-caught sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden--

In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple,

An hundred times made plain,

To seek another's profit

And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--

The savage wars of peace--

Fill full the mouth of Famine,

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

(The end for others sought)

Watch sloth and heathen folly

Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--

No iron rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper--

The tale of common things.

The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go, make them with your living

And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden,

And reap his old reward--

The blame of those ye better

The hate of those ye guard--

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--

"Why brought ye us from bondage,

Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--

Ye dare not stoop to less--

Nor call too loud on Freedom

To cloak your weariness.

By all ye will or whisper,

By all ye leave or do,

The silent sullen peoples

Shall weigh your God and you.

Take up the White Man's burden!

Have done with childish days--

The lightly-proffered laurel,

The easy ungrudged praise:

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years,

Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,

The judgment of your peers.

If someone who had never heard of Rudyard Kipling stumbled onto this poem, he could easily take it as a criticism, and a pretty harsh one at that, of imperialism. Reading it, I want say the same thing anti-war protestors in the 60s said, "Hell no! I won't go!" I'd rather stay here in Illinois and post messages on Free Republic. (As an aside, if we do colonize the third world, I hope the people in charge don't read Plato, or that remark could come back and bite me.)