Which colonies have been established by the US? Are you talking about the military bases in foreign countries?
They literally fended off communism and stalinism.
Its really easy to make grand claims when you are Iceland.
The first statement is so vague as to be meaningless. What does it mean to promote freedom and democracy? How many milliDems are contained in each bomb you drop on Serbia, Iraq, or Gaza?
Fended off Communism? Last I checked, China was a superpower, and the fact that the western media are heating up their hysterics means they are doing quite well.
Stalinism was fended off by Stalin kicking the bucket. For most of his life he was a US ally.
The most obvious difference between Britain and the other colonizers is that in most British colonies the former native populations have vanished in a much greater proportion than in the colonies of other countries (with the notable exception of India, which was much more populous since the beginning and where much less British have immigrated).
Based on this difference, Britain does not seem to have been the morally highest, but the opposite.
The current higher solidarity between some former British colonies is based exactly on the fact that these are the colonies where the natives have been almost completely replaced by immigrants, which are more closely related between themselves due to their common origin.
That the Spanish Empire established large extractive colonies in 2 densely populated Indias (Aztec, Inca empires) [0] does not erase the complete and near total genocide the Spanish perpetrated in the less populated Caribbean, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina etc to replace the natives with their settlers.
The intractable population density of large extractive colonies does not excuse Empire, and does not provide moral superiority.
Not sure about that. They all have white anglo-saxon protestant roots but there are too many differences for me to believe they have similar cultures. People I've met from the US and the UK have always seemed like polar opposites to me when it comes to personal values and general life philosophy.
> As bad a Britain was during colonization, they seemed to be the morally highest out of the colonizers.
I live in a former portuguese colony. I simply can't argue with that.
There are significant differences between anglo countries but they also all have similar moral philosophy, Britain-derived legal and political systems, they’re maritime powers so have mostly compatible geopolitical dispositions, since WWI they have a history of close military cooperation, and since WWII they’ve established a stable pecking order. That’s all before considering the shared language which means they have similar ways of chopping up reality, similar myths, and a lot of contemporary cultural sharing. The differences that exist will keep them separate countries and distinct cultures but the similarities compared to other European countries let alone elsewhere are significant.
There is a reason why the British Empire was able to get a lot of support from local populations. Some groups had a lot to gain from British rules, including oppressed group: I think this might me true for one group of my own ancestors.
