"As long as you have the wisdom to keep this country as the sanctuary
of liberty, wherever [people] worship freedom they will turn their
faces towards you." Edmund Burke
Yes, now I'm beginning a third post with that quotation. And why?
The reasons for that will likely prove to be long and involved. Beginning with how fashionable it now is to excoriate not only the European 'white' empires but also the whole notion of empire.
As to the second excoriation, I'll say, well and good, accompanied with questions about what may take the place of current unitary or corporate empires. You can, and I would, bet my bottom dollar that they're not about to be replaced by peaceable confederations and still less by pristine forests with innocent human creatures prancing like fauns in Arcady. As to the first, I'll observe how much of the excoriations come from other current or former Great Powers (China, Arabia and Turkey, I'm looking at you) and throw some words which basically amount to, 'Can it, sore loser!'
I hope none of my readers need reminders that the sequence of formation, zenith, decline and fall of empires is as old, almost, as civilization itself. It has been nearly unheard-of for any empire to have internal critics who will tell the rulers of said empire that they are behaving in a way which will prove the undoing of that empire in time because said empire is betraying the best in itself.
Virgil may have come close to such a thing, but in a more upbeat way when, after admitting all the talents of the recently-conquered-by-Rome Greeks, he wrote these lines:
But you, Romans, remember your great arts;
To bring [civilization] to remote places,
To establish peace under the rule of law,
To subdue the mighty, and show them mercy
Once they are conquered.
Apart from that, there is only one nation with such an internal conscience, and it never was and probably will never be, an empire. Indeed, it is a tiny nation which punches far above its weight, thanks to the God Who made them a nation: Am Yisrael.
And there may have been only one empire which at least tried to have such a conscience. Yes, many of its agents only pretended to have such a conscience while they were only in it for the money, but there were also many who actually did. Kipling's poem, The White Man's Burden, is today roundly condemned for its 'racism'. But some say Kipling wasn't referring to lack of melanin in the skin but to the light in the hearts of such 'uplifters'. At least, he sounds genuine in his belief in such lights to me. Ponder this couplet of lines from that poem:
Fill full the mouth of famine
And bid the sickness cease.
These are two things Kipling thought of as vital to the success of the imperial mission. Yes, I know of the imperial role in making the Bengal Famine of 1943, not to mention the Great Hunger of 1845-49. And however much some may regard this poem as a screed, I'll also bet my bottom dollar that Kipling himself never meant it to be so used. But tell me: in all of human history, had any empire even thought of doing such things? Had any empire had any thoughts at all aside from subjugating as many others as possible and taking as much as possible from its subject peoples?
The British Empire had an appreciable number who believed in its mission, and who were also willing to call out authority in the City and/or Westminster and/or in the field for behaving in ways they considered antithetical to that mission, indeed for downright un-British behavior. I suggest that, a primary reason for this, is how deep many Britons were into the Scriptures. A secondary reason would be their knowledge of their own history and their long struggle to bring even the Crown under the law.
Democracy is a progression and we need it to be progressing again. No nation should measure greatness in how many billionaires it has; they are likelier to be onerous parasites on those nations than anything else! No, any nation's greatness is measured in the absence of abject poverty and ignorance among its citizens, in the equal fairness of the law and its enforcers to all its citizens and enabling all of them to be heard somehow and in civil discussion that can and must be passionate and yet measured and civil towards those on the other sides--and the resources left for succeeding generations!
On my dad's side, my ancestors were colonists here: Scots, English and Welsh. And here, and in what were once called the Dominions, many have come from other nations to adopt our language and our civics while retaining their own customs at home and enriching our societies.
My dad's people were also independent, slave-less farmers in the antebellum South. They had an idea where 'liberty' stopped for them and others. It is time for democracy to move forward again, and not only in America but all over the English-speaking world and to resume its offensive worldwide as well. On the Continent (of Europe), in Latin America and Africa.
Conscience above the power of one's tribe is a gift of God to this planet, transmitted first through the Jews (which is why all those who would make the tribe and/or nation absolute hate the Jews with such intensity) and then through a growing number of peoples.
I think I will leave you with this question: has any other empire even tried to rule with such a conscience as have the empires made by those of us whose mother tongue is English? Seriously, as the young people say nowadays.
I also hope the source of such conscience doesn't dry up in the face of what might well be serious Jewish fascism. At any rate, the new Israeli government scares me in that.
