Empires and Imperialism was: XBOX 360 2724

wrote, in part:

What would be wrong if every country on Earth...

- had a legal system that fully recognized minority rights;

- had a well-entrenched free press;

- had dependable democratic elections;

- had police forces, customs inspectors, and so on among whom corruption was virtually unknown, and considered highly shocking and unexpected, and severely punished, when it occasionally came to light?

It would seem that necessary preconditions for this would be reducing ethnic friction and increasing economic prosperity.

The result, of course, would be world peace. All the nations would have a common interest in continued peace and prosperity, and wars of aggression would be hopeless endeavors that no nation's people would wish to be caught in.

Of course, this buttumes a bedrock of shared values, and leaves no room for the "democratic" expression of, say, Islamic supremacism.

In any event, if nations that didn't measure up to these criteria ceased to be sovereign, but were kept firmly under the colonial tutelage of those that did, our world would also be a quiet and peaceful place, making steady progress towards enlightenment. As it was in the Victorian Era, before those nasty Germans derailed it - but they've learned their lesson now, and it seems to be the French we will have to keep a close eye on.

Except for a small amount of petty crime, wouldn't it be wonderful if our newspapers had only good news to print... because that was all that was actually happening? No wars, no political repression, no terrorism, just the construction of a dam here, a thermonuclear power plant there, a Thorium breeder somewhere else, an astronaut planting the British flag or the American flag on Mercury or Quaoar, and so on and so forth, with various other advances in science, industry, and medicine, rather than distressing political tumults marking the main events of the day.

John Savard Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server More than 140,000 groups Unlimited download