Anti-colonial is bad! Colonial is good!

A wonderful comment to a previous post told me exactly what I wanted to hear:

“most folk will consent together with your webpage.”

I don’t want to hear that the commenter was not legitimate, and I refuse to delete it.
Besides, I would hate to be running a non-consenting webpage.
Geez, I was supposed to be writing about the losing issue of colonialism. Yes, I do mean losing. Ever since this republic was formed, colonialism has been on the losing side of things. The former colonists who broke with colonialism when they signed the Declaration of Independence started a stubborn American meme. It’s a meme which goes to the heart of what this country has always been about. Colonialism is about as un-American as you can get. Sure, there are people who might maintain otherwise, but they are on the losing side of history, and they have been ever since our founders ran them (in those days colonialists were known as “Loyalists”) out of the country.
The problem is, there’s a side of me that is very corrupt and always willing to compromise, and I have to say that under certain circumstances, colonialism can be a good thing. I am 100% in favor of colonizing space, for example. Yet there comes a time in the history of any colony where the people become self-sufficient, and the more self-sufficient they become, the more they tend to resent rule from a far-away power in some distant place. If Americans were to successfully colonize Mars, after a few generations the American-Martians might very well decide they were sick of Washington (or Brussels) telling them how to run their lives.
And when that happens, it’s Declaration time, baby!
Consent is the key. And once a government lacks consent of the governed, it is doomed.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that while there is plenty wrong with Barack Obama, I don’t think attacking him for being an “anti-colonialist” is a politically sound idea. I don’t think we have had a president who was not anti-colonialist (except possibly Theodore Roosevelt to a limited degree). This is not so much a criticism of Dinesh D’Souza so much as it is a criticism of Newt Gingrich. The former wrote a book, but the latter is running for president, and while his remarks might have been initially appealing (especially for people who are always hungry for new anti-Obama red meat memes), when the dust settles Gingrich is the one who going to look foolish.
Of course, in the man’s defense, it should be pointed out that he wrote a Ph.D. dissertation praising Belgian colonial rule in the Congo. I lived there (when it was called Zaire) for three months, and I will never forget the anti-Belgian resentment that I observed from talking to people. While I think it’s natural for people who are occupied by any foreign power to be resentful, the way the Belgians had behaved in the Congo was particularly dreadful — inexcusable by any civilized standard.

The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo Free State. … The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber; they even went out to harvest them instead of rubber… They became a sort of currency. They came to be used to make up for shortfalls in rubber quotas, to replace… the people who were demanded for the forced labour gangs; and the Force Publique soldiers were paid their bonuses on the basis of how many hands they collected.

Estimates vary, but under King Leopold’s rule it does appear that many millions of Congolese were killed. Things improved once the Belgian government took over from their king, but it was hardly the sort of thing that most Americans would ever approve.

…the city centres were reserved to white population only, while the blacks were organized in «cites indigenes» (ironically called ‘le belge’). Hospitals, department stores and other facilities were often reserved for either whites or blacks. In the police, the blacks could not pass the rank of non-commissioned officer. The blacks in the cities could not leave their houses from 9 pm to 4 am. This type of segregation began to disappear gradually only in the 1950s.

The war to get the colonialists out was messy and nearly led to a Communist state, and things haven’t been much better since. In fact, since 1997 millions more Congolese have died in what has been called “The Deadliest War In The World.”
It is of course tempting to say that colonialism would be a better approach, but despite all the killing and chaos, the Congolese have still not invited the Belgians back to rule, and I don’t think they will.
Nor will Kenya invite their former British rulers back. Gingrich has taken to calling Obama a “Kenyan anti-colonialist,” which is a clever choice of words, as it implies that not only is the president a colonialist, but he is at heart Kenyan.
True, he is half Kenyan, and his father was involved in the struggle against British colonialism in Kenya, and he doubtless shares his general worldview.
I realize that as code language, “anti-colonial worldview” embraces more than just opposition to colonialism. But I think that when the dust settles, people won’t be interested in what the term might mean to think-tank insiders. Instead, there will be a collective sigh of SO WHAT!
Of course the president could be expected to be opposed to British colonialism in Kenya. That’s such a no-brainer that I can’t believe it has become a criticism. As a criticism, it makes about as much sense as it would to accuse JFK of being an Irish anti-colonialist (which he undoubtedly was).
What would anyone expect Obama to be? A colonialist?
I think that once again, Gingrich has made himself look foolish, and he is stuck with his words, which can easily be construed to make him look like a colonialist. And because he is running for president in a country where hating colonialism is as American as apple pie, it might not play well with the voters (a majority of whom are probably not supporters of British colonialism). There are a lot of important issues facing this country, but I think this one is a real loser for conservatives.
Besides, in light of Panthergate, the president may have violated his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
After all, assuming the president is an anti-colonialist, isn’t it fair that he be held to a standard that was written by anti-colonialists?


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One response to “Anti-colonial is bad! Colonial is good!”

  1. guy on internet Avatar
    guy on internet

    “Anticolonialist” is D’Souza’s characteristically clumsy way of avoiding saying Obama is a “race man”?a plausible thesis, in a certain form?because D’Souza is too Beltway to say that. Addressing his term at face value, or adopting it as a shibboleth like Gingrich has, is just confusing.
    I think D’Souza even confused himself with it. There’s no Kenya in Obama, even by Obama’s own telling. The protagonist of Dreams is as American as Vanilla Ice.