It is *always* for the oppressed's "own good" that they are ruled. Andrew Jackson justified Indian Relocation with the reasoning that it would protect Indians from hostile white settlers who meant to harm them. ("I have done my duty to my red children," he said after displacing them.) Blacks were being lifted out of their native barbarism by slavery. And recently Republican congressman Howard Coble justified Japanese-American internment during WW2 as a protective measure (Hateful, prejudiced whites meant to harm them, you see). Likewise, the FBI has said Operation Liberty Shield--during which the FBI has gone around interrogating Iraqi-Americans--is in part to help protect Arab-Americans from hateful whites. Yeah, right!
Unfortunately there's no law that says such hurbis invariably results in comeuppance. Sometimes the oppressor just gets away with it.
Brian
On Sat, 3 May 2003, Shane Taylor wrote:
> Slave-owners of 19th century America took it as a humanitarian imperative
> to rule those judged not yet ready to govern themselves, didn't they? I
> once read Adolph Reed say that the conceit that self-determination would
> be self-destructive for the subject populations was a major defense of
> apartheid in America.
>
> The champions of the war promise an (eventual) advent of Middle East
> democracy by way of foreign occupation. The US military is the one true
> vanguard of freedom in the region, and must seize power with a
> transitional dictatorship of the democrats in order to liberate the Arab
> populace. Give up your sovereignty, and we will make you free.
>
> -- Shane