Thoughtcrime of the day: Things were better when Britannia ruled the waves.

When all those bitter little leftists gripe about the US being the world's policeman, what they frequently seem to forget is that the world really needs one. There needs to be someone out there telling the savages, no, it's not OK to kill, rape and steal, enslave whole nations and generally be insufferable bullies.

What I recall from my time in the hippie world was that, as children, the kids who liked to bully and menace everyone, not the teachers, were really the ones who ruled the roost. The weird theories that ruled our dumb hippie parents' and teachers' brains asserted the glowing goodness of all mankind if only he were freed of the constraints of rules, laws and religious prohibitions.

The kids weren't dumb at all, however, and knew this meant that rule-by-fists had come in. Think about it. If, as the "progressives" lefties, hippies and socialist do-gooders believe, we could create a utopia on earth when everyone is just allowed to do his own thing all the time (as in my little social-experiment school in 1974) what is to stop half the world simply bullying the other half. Not everyone just wants to live in peacelovegroovy land and grow tomatoes. What quite a lot of people like best is being extremely unpleasant to everyone else, particularly everyone weaker than themselves.

In this country, we have seen close up what happens when the hippie theories take over the brains of the police. When the cops try to be the bullies' best buddies, they can't be police anymore. I remember quite well what sort of response I used to get from the "teachers" in the hippie Free School, when I was sent as a delegate from the bullies' subjugated victims. "But that's just Charlie's way of expressing himself." Being a fairly peaceful child, and not yet trained in logic, I failed at that point to take up the nearest lead pipe and "express" my displeasure at the response.


Warren:

Britain had ruled the waves through the previous century, and taken upon herself the role of “world policeman.” On her watch over the high seas, piracy and the slave trade had been diminished, almost to nothing, for the first time in recorded history. And, a sea-borne international system of trade and communications had been secured. As the 20th century wore on, that torch, lighting the way to freedom and order, was passed from London to Washington.

Our kids today are taught in school, when they are taught any history at all, that Imperialism “was” an unmitigated evil. Alas, this is an unmitigated lie, and it is to European Imperialism that not only we, but formerly subject peoples, owe lives much longer and less painful than those of our ancestors. For in addition to free trade, and the rule of law at sea, the fleets carried with them ideas, and technology -- most significantly, certain principles of hygiene which, more even than the discoveries and techniques of modern medicine, contributed everywhere to longevity, prosperity, and health.