I appreciate that, and the backhanded compliment even though I'm not actually English or even a litterateur, but it is true that the idea is almost always used by people like Niall Ferguson to legitimise empire and capitalism.
And there's nothing grubby or reactionary about it. In this
> case, I was trying to figure out what alternative universe you were
> writing from.
It's called Greenwich Mean Time.
Yeah we would be. But that's not the way it happened. We make
> history, etc.
>
> Doug
Clearly, which is why we always learn important lessons the hard way, and I think Yoshie is trying to shove a few of those hard lessons down our gullets.