On 23 Sep 2004 15:49:24 GMT, ost (Chris Mark) wrote:

After one brief infection, we seem to have developed immunity to the imperial
disease.

Well, Chris, I don't know if I agree with that. Americans are
certainly economic colonialists, even today.

And we were certainly geographical colonialists, as Spain discovered
on several occasions. Texas, California, the states between; Cuba and
Puerto Rico; Panama (okay, that was post-Spain), the Phillippines, and
Guam as you just mentioned. Hawaii, for crying out loud, which we
liked so much that we incorporated it, as to a lesser extent we have
done with Puerto Rico. It was only in the 1930s that we developed an
aversion to colonialism, perhaps mostly in the person of Franklin
Roosevelt (he particularly disliked French and British colonialism .

And we're fighting two colonial wars at the moment. We are much nicer
about it in 2001 than we were in 1901, but it's still colonialism of a
sort.

One could even argue that we colonized German and Japan, not to
mention Korea, Britain, and numerous other nations in the ten years
following World War Two, and are only now withdrawing. It was a benign
sort of colonialism (France asked us to leave after a couple of
decades, and we went, a pretty rare event in the history of
colonialism) but still...

all the best -- Dan Ford
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