Consider "Imperialism": Do you have a hard time linking it to the Western way of life? Does it fly in the face of truth, Justice and the American...

There appear to me to be two distinct questions here.

First, you have to talk about how you perceive the term “imperialism” and whether it makes you uncomfortable to think about Americans and Europeans engaging in imperialism.  One way to define “imperialism” is to say that it is what happens when a powerful country takes control of a less powerful country and uses that second country to benefit itself.  In other words, you can say that this is a very selfish and even immoral activity.  A country is using its power to take away another country’s freedom and to use that country for the imperial country’s own good.

If you perceive imperialism as immoral, then do you have any problem with saying that Western countries (ourselves and countries “like us”) have been imperialistic?  Some people do not like to admit that the United States could do anything that is selfish and immoral.  Do you feel this way?  Do you feel that imperialism contradicts our values as Americans?  Do you feel that it is fair to say that the West has been (and is) imperialistic?  In other words, this part of the questions is asking you whether you think that imperialism is incompatible with our values and whether you think we really have been (and are) imperialistic.

Now, the second part of this question has to do with whether you think that imperialism has been a good thing or a bad thing overall.  Has it helped the countries that have been controlled by others or has it hurt them?

Imperialists living 100 years ago or so thought that imperialism was a good thing for the subjugated people.  Rudyard Kipling, in his famous poem “The White Man’s Burden,” said that the white people went out to work hard to help the people they conquered.  He said that the white people were doing their best to civilize the non-white, non-Western peoples.  Do you agree with this idea in any way?  For example, you could argue that British control of India was a good thing because when the British came in, India was made up of a large number of monarchical states and now it is a democracy.  It also has a much better educational system than in had before the British came.  As another example, the US built port facilities and things like sewer systems in places in the Philippines.  Thus, they helped build the Filipino economy and to improve the health of some Filipinos.  Some modern historians, notably Niall Ferguson (see link below) still believe that this is the right way to characterize imperialism.

Would you agree that imperialism was, overall, a good thing for the people who were subjugated by imperial powers?  Would you, instead, say that the Western powers acted selfishly when they took and used empires for their own good? Would you say that it was, on the whole, a bad thing that they destroyed the indigenous people’s native cultures and took away their freedom to choose their own destinies?  These are the questions you are being asked to deal with here.