I liked this extract from the "Life of Brian" in the comments:

Reg They bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had. And not just from us, but from our fathers, and from our fathers' fathers.

Loretta And from our fathers', fathers', fathers.

Reg Yeah.

Loretta And from our fathers', fathers', fathers', fathers.

Reg Yeah, all right, Stan. Don't label the point. And what have they ever given us in return?

Rebel2 The aquaduct?

Reg What?

Rebel2 The aquaduct.

Reg Oh yeah, yeah. They did give us that. That's true, yeah.

Rebel3 And sanitation.

Loretta Oh yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like.

Reg Yeah, all right, I'll grant you the aquaduct , the santation are two things the Romans have done...

Mathias And the roads.

Reg Well, yeah. Obviously the roads, I mean the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aquaduct, and the roads...

Rebel4 Irrigation.

Rebel2 Medcine.

Rebel5 Education.

Reg Yeah, yeah, all right. Fair enough...

Rebel1 And the wine.

Rebels Oh, yeah Francis Yeah. Yeah, That's something that we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left, huh.

Rebel6 Public baths.

Loretta And it's safe to walk the in streets at night now Reg.

Francis Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it, the only ones who could in a place like this.

PFJ Huhuhuh. Huhuhuhuhuh.

Reg All right. But apart from the sanitation, the medecine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health... What have the Romans ever done for us?

Rebel2 Brought peace?

Reg Oh, peace. Shaddup.


(BTW I take that as an answer to my question a while back as to whether I was wrong in seeing that film as primarily a satire on sectarian politics by comparing it with religion, and taking for granted the silliness of the latter, rather than as had been suggested a satire on religion).

It was fascinating that Gopal's deprecatory reference to "the white man and his burden" was followed by a supportive comment from an enthusiastic supporter of his Grauniad adding that "every colonizing power also had its anti-imperialist chroniclers, who even when not actively sympathizing with the colonized native, laid bare the ravages of colonialism (Conrad is one example)Mark Twain, Albert Camus, William Dean Howells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jean-Paul Sartre, Rudyard Kipling are just some examples....

The contradictions in this topic are brilliantly highlighted by none other than Kipling, the radical Tory imperialist poet laureate of the Empire in his often cited but seldom read poem on "The White Man's Burden":http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/mod/Kipling.html

Gopal's one sided judgment is both a confirmation of and answered by the last 3 verses:

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 he 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 cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred 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!


The same enthusiastic "anti-imperialist" also "shudders to think what US imperialism did to Japan when Commodore Perry virtually bombed the Japanese ports and forced Japan to halt its great modernization drive under Mutsuhito Meiji in the 1880s and develop into a monstrous empire".

It was of course Commodore Perry who forced Japan to start, not halt its great modernization drive under the Meiji, (resulting in a monstrous empire and much more).

One musn't underestimate the importance of sheer ignorance of history, philosophy and politics among the pseudos. One cannot grasp a complex contradictory reality if one is simply not interested in reality at all but is merely engaged in "shuddering to think". Thinking requires an end to shuddering.

Also fascinating is the links to "debate" about Hari's denunciation of the British Empire by comparing it to "shudder" STALINISM. All sides of these discussions are agreed in rejecting (and being totally ignorant of) communist perspectives. No wonder the Indian Communists, firmly allied with British imperialism against people like Gopal the Grauniad author, were totally isolated.

BTW if you ever get a chance to see a 1946 film variously titled "Men of Africa", "Kisenga, Man of Africa" or "Witch Doctor" don't miss it. It has an upper class Englishwoman liberal twit called Mrs Upjohn who perfectly epitomizes the essentially reactionary character of liberals in contrast to more progressive outright colonialists. Its one of those old black and white films that sometimes gets late night re-runs. I was struck by the fact that back in 1946 the Grauniad's line was taken for granted as being a reflection of upper class reactionary twittery without the slightest illusion that it might be in any sense "left".