How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Colonialism
by John Constantine

It absolutely astonished me.  I had been listening to Dinesh for quite some time now.  He shares the same name as another person I know, so whenever I hear it on the radio, or see it in print, I actually listen to or read what ever he's saying.  And I must say, he's completely gone off the edge of reality with today's piece entitled Two Cheers for Colonialism.

In this gem of an article, Dinesh tries to make the point that people have been better off with colonialism than without it.  Sure, it's not such a great system, with the pillaging of resources and the subjugation of the native population and all that.  But look at the benefits to people like Dinesh?

Dinesh is an intellectual.  He's the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.  He has been described as one of the "top young public-policy makers in the country".  A pretty smart guy.

Then why the incredibly blatant appeal to non-reality in his cheer for colonialism?

Dinesh's article is almost Orwellian in its content.  His argument beautifully frames "those idiots" in a box of his own construction.  He starts off graciously describing Usama Bin Laden as an "apologist" for terrorism.  Like a pro, he sets the scene for his diorama.

"Let's just say that this Usama chap was really a good fellow.  Even then his arguments just don't hold water".  I can just see him sitting around a bar pantomiming this story to a spell bound cast of bankers and congressman.  I bet they all burst out laughing when he does that with a perfect English accent.  Instantly, Dinesh subtly tells us that to be against his argument is to be in the same camp as Usama.  Oooh.  I'm scared.

He then unleashes a torrent of logical smart bombs, designed to blow up liberal bunkers in the intellectual realm.  He states that the "theory of oppression" is based on three fundamental premises (and I'm quoting from his article).

Then the fun begins as he boldly destroys each of these premises in a puff of logic.

Let's just examine what he has to say

Let's not forget that he pulls these premises out of his...  uh... hat.  He presents these to the readers as fact.  We're supposed to believe by his references to books on the subject, that after years of analyzing the collective thought on colonialism, he's discovered that these three premises are what the whole theory of oppression is based upon.  So let's look at them.

The first is just a softball he's throwing out.  Makes everyone feel like a real logician knocking that one over.  True, Usama might believe that.  You might even find some die hard communists and true blue socialist that believe this, but I don't think it's fundamental to the theory of oppression.  I don't see that the belief that colonialism is oppressive and we would be better off if this never happened is based on the obviously flawed premise that the West has sole ownership over imperialism and colonialism.  I mean, really.  This is a softball of extraordinary magnitude he's thrown himself.  And when someone starts off throwing the softest of softballs, my weasel alarm starts to ping softly.  Especially when he dedicates so much of the column to defeating the evil soft ball he just threw himself.

So let's move on to the second of Dinesh's premises, since the first is useless and obviously a red herring.  It's hard to believe, but Dinesh actually tries to support the position that colonies provided no economic value to the colonial powers:

Moreover, the West could not have reached its current stage of wealth and influence by stealing from other cultures for the simple reason that there wasn't very much to take.
    - Dinesh D'Souza

I guess all this stuff about land and an incredibly cheap source of human labor have no economic value at all, Dinesh.  If it weren't so tragic his argument would be laughable.  According to Dinesh, we now know that all wars have been fought for the wrong reasons.  People have been fighting for millennia and we didn't even know how stupid they all were.  They had nothing to take, so these poor colonial powers were misinformed at best.  Tragic, really.  Pity they didn't do their homework before they started such a long and expensive campaign to take that country.  Can you imagine how much the British empire wasted in it's silly pursuit of an empire?  Gosh!  If they had only known that their was nothing to gain by the colonies.

But this larceny cannot possibly account for the enormous gap in economic, political and military power that opened up between the West and the rest of the world.
     - Dinesh D'Souza

C'mon Dinesh.  Pull my finger, I've got another one for you.

Then Dinesh tells us that Science, Democracy and Capitalism was the source of the West's power.  Perhaps he has a point here.  After all, Science seems distinctively western in origins and the place where it became a self sustaining institution.  Likewise with capitalism and democracy (The Greeks, after all, are part of the west too).  But this is entirely beside the point, Dinesh.  He's basically using the "Ignore the man behind the curtain" class of argument.  And let's not forget that what we currently class as democracy was created by the revolution of a colony against it's colonial masters.  The way he talks about it, the British have always had a democracy, and 1776 was just a codification and formalization of the system.

I'm running out of fingers to pull, Dinesh.

This form of economic organization we call capitalism certainly was a critical part of colonialism's success.  The market is astonishingly efficient at allocating resources according to some decision function.  And I'm not saying that capitalism is bad because of this.  It's just that anything astonishingly efficient is going to be pretty damn useful to both those who are ethically evil and those that are ethically good.  Is it any surprise that the winners in the game of colonialism developed it into a self sustaining institution?

How dumb do you think we are?

Science.  Well, duh.  Where would weapons technology be without those good old scientists.  Leonardo is just one of a long line of weapon builders that in their spare time painted and sculpted.  It's hard to imagine many situations where inferior weapons technology is actually an advantage...

Now we can understand better why the West was able, between the 16th and the 19th century, to subdue the rest of the world and bend it to its will.
     - Dinesh D'Souza

Finally we are getting somewhere.  The theory of oppression, as Dinesh puts it, is really about how when a small percentage of the world's population bends the rest of the world's population to their will, it is commonly called oppression.

We can see Dinesh laying groundwork for his final thrust of logic.  Like a polished fencer, he has us lined up and ready for the fatal blow from his logical light saber.  Caught in his inevitable web of logic we are helpless now to defend ourselves.  Curse his logic!

Dinesh leaves all credence behind by using himself as an example of why India is better off with having had colonialism than without its loving caress on their history.  Dinesh would have us believe that because a small percentage of his country's population is far better off than the rest of their population, the whole experience must be good.

Dinesh, remember your birth lineage.  I doubt you'd be thinking colonialism has been good if you were only making a dollar a day.  I also doubt your story is one of rags to riches.  Maybe it is, and I respect you for it.  You got good education - undoubtedly better than any you could get in your own country's native system.  Considering the British ripped up any native infrastructure and installed their own, more efficient and advanced infrastructure, you would have been very wise to take advantage of it.

But just because a small percentage of y'all have done well under colonialism doesn't prove your premise that colonialism was good for everyone.  It's clear from every economic measure we have at our disposal, there are vastly more poor people out there than even what we in America consider to be at the poverty line as far as income is concerned.

So I just have to wonder how bad of a survival situation these people would have to be in before Dinesh would consider them to be in a worse off situation.  From my viewpoint, I'm willing to concede that they are probably no worse off under the West than they would have been under their own unique form of oppressive colonialism.  I do agree that the West doesn't hold exclusive claim to bastards, slavers and otherwise unsavory characters.  But to claim that we're all better off because we had colonialism....  Well, I think the available economic numbers simply belie this fact.  Instead showing that life is shit for most of the people on this planet.  You just lucked out, Dinesh.

None of this is to say that colonialism by itself was a good thing, only that bad institutions sometimes produce good results.
     - Dinesh D'Souza

Something else I can agree with.  The universe is fully populated with examples of people and institutions that, despite their best efforts, manage to do good things.  They are never more surprised than I am, I'll grant you that.

Maybe you will now see why I am not going to be sending an invoice for reparations to Tony Blair.
     - Dinesh D'Souza

So that is what this is all about?  I thought this was a blatant piece of propaganda, designed to brainwash the victims - or at least their intellectual apologists and supporters - into believing their actually better off with all the crap they have to put up with.  To give those lazy liberals an excuse to go with the flow and just get over it.

C'mon guys, get with the program!  If it wasn't for colonialism, we'd all, like, still be in the stone age or something.

2002.7.7