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Old
Words, New Setting-Part I
by
Gordon Francis Corbett
It is time to say the old words.
It is time to utter the old phrases.
It is time to think about “colonies,” and “empire,” and
even, “Take up the white man’s burden.”
Imagine that in 1901, a ship stuffed with nitrocellulose had been
steamed into San Francisco Harbor and exploded.
Such a detonation would have scoured many of that city’s storied
hills, and would have killed thousands of its people.
Our great-grandparents could immediately have rattled off a list of
suspects. One of the most plausible would have been the Moros, whose
Philippine Islands we had just wrested from the Spaniards.
William McKinley had urged us to build an American empire, which
goal Theodore Roosevelt endorsed. After
having endured Spain for centuries, the Moros did not welcome us.
Given the ship and the guncotton, they might have liked the idea of
using them to deliver an eviction notice.
Many of our American predecessors would have reacted then much as
we did on 11 September, but with a difference.
After the shock wore off, and after they learned who had destroyed
San Francisco, they would have erupted not only with anger, but with
condescension as well. They would have condemned the attack as something to be
expected “from trash like those Moros.”
This reaction would have stemmed from their belief that one of the
supposed purposes of imperialism is to civilize uncivilized people.
Their anger and condescension would have resulted partly from the
realization that the proposed “civilizees,” being uncivilized, had
somewhat ungraciously rejected our attempt to enlighten them:
“What ingrates!”
More in Part II.
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