In the decades since World War Two you will have noticed the endless sanctimony from the left regarding America. One seemingly endless criticism has been about the supposed “American Imperialism”. Perhaps you yourself have swallowed that one whole too.
Whenever America seeks to assist in preventing innocent people being subjugated and murdered by communist dictators, start the clock on when the ‘usual suspects’ will start hysterically screaming about this ‘imperialism’. For 75 years it really has been a rather pathetic claim that has been dutifully accepted as ‘fact’ by weak spineless right-wing politicians all over the world, dutifully hanging their heads in shame at the feet of the socialist orthodoxy.
It was quite acceptable within left-wing circles for the people in such places as South Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba and South Korea to be slaves when the slave owners and tyrants are communists. Left-wing windbag and occasional cartoonist Tom Scott even mentioned in his autobiography how the Wellington ‘usual suspects’ viewed the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia as nothing more than collateral damage.
It was never a problem when the old Soviet Union, or China today, sought to create an evil empire of tyranny.
Cast your mind back to the virtue signalling, the protests and the bizarre and insane behaviour towards a US warship, USS Texas, visiting New Zealand in 1983 and what a morally wicked person you were if you dared suggest it was actually quite a good thing (as I, alone in all of NZ, actually did at the ripe old age of 10).
Cast your mind back to the petitions, the speeches, the protests and the whole palaver surrounding American influence in the Pacific and how it was portrayed. Whenever you see bearded, elderly men wearing scruffy clothing, striding around the streets talking to themselves in a loud angry voice – it was they as young men who were doing the endless protesting about “American Imperialism”.
So where are they today? Literally today, when China is island-hopping ‘making an offer you can’t refuse’ to various Polynesian prime ministers? Where are the protests about ‘imperialism’? Where is the same standard that was always applied against America being applied to China from these anti-imperialists?
Could it be that far from being anti-imperialist, it was merely a matter of who was doing the imperialism or who was creating an empire? Could it be that a communist empire of subjugated enslaved people is perfectly acceptable – and part of a long-term game plan?
A modern version of ‘two legs bad; four legs good’ mindlessness: in this case Britain and America bad; Russia and China good.
Even worse, as I mentioned earlier, has been the number of right wingers who always bought into this stuff – always accepted the moral premise of criticising America and her ‘ambitions’ (which never actually existed, by the way). Whenever you accept any moral premise of the left, on any matter whatsoever, you disgrace yourself – as if you’d just walked into your favourite bar and proudly announced you had married your sister. There are no exceptions dear reader; all or nothing.
The criticism of Foreign Minister Mahuta in the last few days is misplaced. I doubt she (or anyone else in the Beehive) sees anything wrong with turning Pacific Islands into de facto communist dictatorships – any more than I would see a need to criticise reducing income taxes to two cents in the dollar: merely ‘mission accomplished’ for a longstanding objective.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/nuclear-free-new-zealand/ship-visits