That's simply false BS: <I said it was just an expansion, not a desire to spread better conditions. It had no higher purpose.> Just as my actions now have a higher purpose, people back then had higher purposes too.
Which is not to say that all individuals or all intentions were set on the higher purposes. But overall, they were, which is why the empire of such a diminutive country could spread so far across the planet. Maoris were not morons. Nor were other people around the world. Neither were they helpless before the British missionaries. All too often, they ate them!
I have chosen of my own free will to become part of the American Empire. Nobody forced me. Overall, the empire is for the good and is a manifestation of higher purpose than making a lot of money.
Dr Irwin Jacobs and Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among others have not created huge and profitable enterprises so they can pour it down the drain on hedonistic nonsense. They have created hugely valuable businesses which have created vast consumer surpluses and used their profits to leverage even better things into reality. I have done the same, in a mini-way.
One doesn't have to be self-sacrificing to do that; one can also benefit. It's not a zero-sum game. It's mutuality, synergy, symbiosis, not altruism.
Yes, sometimes people like Lt William Calley taint the enterprise, but overall, it's a good thing.
I'm not much interested in rehashing history, but just as Saddam, his horrible offspring and other gang members had the Iraqi population in fear of them and handing fortunes to them, the Chinese rulers of the late 19th century were interested in their own power, not the welfare of the peasants who were serfs. The Mao revolution was to free said peasants from the depredations of the powerful.
You presumably think you are the person who should decide for everyone what they choose to ingest. But I think what I choose to do is none of your business. If people wish to consume opium, booze, coffee, dope or tobacco, that's up to them.
I'd quite welcome Japan, USA, or China leaning on NZ's government demanding that I be allowed to buy what I like, cut down what trees I like, and otherwise run my life how I like. I don't really care how I get freedom, as long as I get it. Maybe a gun-boat in Wellington harbour would do the trick.
Mqurice
PS: I called you a racist first, so I win the argument. You can't come in later and start throwing the racist word around when it has already been used against you. That's typical of you racists!! <At any rate it is precisely what I find to be a racist bent of some of your posts. > And to say that folks are all just folks and all are racist to some extent is absurd. To belabour the point, there is a difference, subtle though it might seem to you, between exterminating Jews en masse, hacking hordes of Tutsis and making generalisations about groups of people, which is not racism. Groups themselves demand to have their group identities recognized, so it's patently absurd to say it's racist to agree with them that they are different in the ways they claim to be different, as well as in other ways which they prefer not to recognize. |
