Andrew,

Living overseas I too easily rise to the bait of little Englanderness. Too often I come across English people whose luggage has more of a cultural experience than they have. When you listen to them in China complaining that they can’t get proper Chinese food like at home, you marvel. Or when they assume an arrogance that can only be acquired through total incomprehension of their environment, I think it should be pointed out

Partly this smallness comes through a poor understanding of history and a conviction that somehow it was better when the British ruled– you certainly get that in Hong Kong.

So I’ll retract the littler Englander comment because you are not these people, and it is much easier to fire out frustration on the internet than a couple of drunks in a bar late at night.

I think we probably have not too dissimilar views about the British past, but where we differ is on the interpretation of America.

Firstly, I’m naïve enough to believe that the founding ideals of the Republic or those that have developed since are in anyway compromised by any actions that have taken place. Just as Rousseau being a $%^& does not in anyway take from the importance of his work.

Secondly, I don’t think the individual examples you gave paint the United States in a particularly bad light. We discussed slavery and I think we can agree that slavery was everywhere and the abolition took place in many places before the US (and the UK for that matter) and that although many parts of the States were very late in freeing slaves many parts were very early.

UK played a very active role it stopping the Atlantic slave trade but the United States outlawed the importation of slaves at almost the same time as the UK. The primary difference seems to be the total disregard of the UK to the sovereignty of other nations shipping, while the US respected international law (OK this is stretching it a bit).

I didn’t want to get into a debate on racism in South Africa. The Boers left the Cape in 1836(?) mainly because of slavery, and the formalizing of apartheid was only a continuation of long history of suppressing the civil rights of the black peoples, American racism played very little role in this. The reason we have adopted the word Aparthied into English is because there was no equivalent in the English speaking world.

Genocide is a very emotive word, when used in discussion about Native Americans it becomes an entirely political issue.

Laughable position was used in an earlier post, I used the phrase again because I fina English anti-americanism largely laughable.