While a nation called the United States will continue to appear on a map (if it is not partitioned first or subsumed into a North American Union), it will bear little resemblance to the nation we knew. That is the fate of colonial territories.
When author Dinesh D’Souza diagnosed Barack Obama with anti-colonialism, he did so on the basis of Mr. Obama’s seemingly inexplicable chip-on-the-shoulder attitude toward the country he himself leads, and his eager attempts to move America down the economic and political ladder toward international mediocrity. Where others were accusing Obama of being clueless or socialist, D’Souza concluded — based on Obama’s infatuation with his Kenyan roots — that he was fundamentally an anti-colonialist.
One thing is clear; Mr. Obama denies American Exceptionalism. In fact, he aggressively resists it, preferring the United States to be “one among many.”
While there are certainly problems with D’Souza’s analysis (Obama can be both socialist and Marxist, anti-colonialist and kleptocrat at the same time) I think his fundamental diagnosis is sound, but not just for Mr. Obama. The case can be made that the ruling elites in the United States all suffer from a similar malady, and America is quietly being recolonized to suit their whims.
Colonialism involves the settling of new people in a targeted territory, unlike imperialism, which is purely the military domination of a territory. Colonialism was justified as part of a “civilizing mission.” According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
The Spanish conquest of the Americas sparked a theological, political, and ethical debate about the use of military force to acquire control over foreign lands. This debate took place within the framework of a religious discourse that legitimized military conquest as a way to facilitate the conversion and salvation of indigenous peoples.
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