To: maceng2 who wrote (15005 ) 12/29/2001 6:03:04 PM From: Maurice Winn Read Replies (2) | Respond to PB, Many Americans believe their Paul Revere mythology, have heard of the Boston Tea Party and the War of Independence [so they could maintain slavery for another century and freedom to run taxes up to their current huge level]. They think of the monarchy and the class system. They think of the British Empire as equivalent to the Nazi empire. Hence, they have a distorted point of view as to what really went on in the British Empire. Just as Lt William Calley did not represent the norm in Vietnam and a USA military rapist in Japan doesn't represent USA occupation of Okinawa, there were many British cruelties and arbitrary thuggery. I have stayed in a Japanese youth hostel and heard the most cretinous revolting Americans in an adjacent room who could not reasonably be called animals. A very nice, gentle, Iranian maths professor in our room quietly said to us 'it's not right that people be like that'. They trampled over the no-shoes-inside rules, vomited, swore and were nothing more than barbarians. They did not represent America any more than such barbarians represented the British Empire. Of course, the people who saw them thought 'Hmmm, Americans are very like animals, not cats or other clean, nice animals, but perhaps pigs or baboons'. These egregious examples do not represent the countries which produced them.history-nz.org went on a mad musket marauding and killed thousands. In 1835 [5 years before British rule became official for most tribles], displaced Taranaki Maoris invaded, enslaved and murdered many Morioris when they took over the Chatham Islands with British complicity. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." - > Fine words as an operating framework for another century of slavery [not to mention segregation right up until my times]. Yep, those damn British sure were bad guys.
