Assrocket

I'm not the sort that reads Powerline with any regularity, but this caught my attention:

It's great to see someone standing up for colonialism, especially British colonialism. I agree wholeheartedly with this observation, for example:

Had Britain had the courage to face down Gandhi and his rabble a few years longer, the tragedy that was the partititon of India might have been avoided.

I don't know what to say.

I'm hardly a reflexive defender of Gandhi, or of the pacifist approach to politics. However, to suggest that "Gandhi and his rabble" were responsible for the horrors of partition, when in fact both the policy of partition and the Muslim-Hindu tensions that created the need for partition are direct consequences of British imperial policy, really goes beyond the pale.

Hmm. Let me restate that, because Assrocket likes to go beyond the pale. . .

Arguing that a British imperial project that was built around a divide-and-rule strategy and that relied upon inflaming Muslim-Hindu tensions in order to retain power could actually have defused those tensions in a few short years is a)asinine, and b)moronic. Like many supporters of the imperial project, British or no, Assrocket would like to laud the imperialists for everything good that happened (the relative stability of the world's largest democracy, for example), while blaming leftists and anti-colonials for everything bad that happened (the horrors of partition). These supporters never consider the fact that the imperial project typically left its victims with minimal institutions of governance when evaluating post-colonial failure. They also conveniently forget the violence and brutality of the imperial project (not just in Congo, Assrocket, but in Kenya, India, and other British possessions).

There was a time when the colonial project was viewed with disgust in the United States. Even when the US engaged in neo-colonial policies, as in Vietnam, we made a desperate effort to convince ourselves and others that we were different from the Europeans. There was supposed to be an American way, one that did not rely on colonial domination to achieve our ends.

Apparently, this is no longer the case.