Thursday, March 9, 2017

"Barbarians and the Civilized"

Via Instapundit:
What was colonialism if not the ultimate product of pedagogical optimism, based on the metaphor of the master and the pupil? Europeans gave themselves the mission of guiding toward Enlightenment the indolent, cruel, or spontaneous native, overtaken by his emotions and mired in ignorance. Anticolonialism and its sixties-era prolongation, Third Worldism, kept the metaphor while reversing the roles: the young nations of the Southern Hemisphere would be entrusted with saving the postimperial northern powers. By gaining their independence, the colonized nations offered to their former rulers the chance to redeem their souls. The materialist West could regenerate itself by becoming prisoner of its own barbarians.

Yet in both cases, it was the reference to the infantile that ultimately triumphed.
Link to the whole thing

3 comments:

edutcher said...

The British and Americans offered a better way, the others much less.

One good thing imperialism did was keep most of the crazies in their box.

Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send 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;


Ol' Rudy was right.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The lefts incoherent message to Trump's travel restrictions: Come to the land of oppression.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Umm, maybe I should tweet that.