Originally Posted by
GW in Ohio
Let's do a little history lesson for my friend here who is being rather obtuse.....
When the Age of Discovery started, around the 15th century, the Christian nations of Europe set out to "discover" new lands and to claim them for their monarchs. The goal of these voyages of discovery was to find new lands with natural resources that the more enterprising Europeans could appropriate for their governments.
And that is just what they did. The Europeans siphoned off diamonds, rubber, gold, timber, and whatever else they could plunder from the less enterprising native peoples. They also plundered the native peoples themselves and sold them as slaves. The natural resources that were siphoned off became the basis of the wealth of the Europeans.
Today, the nations of Europe all enjoy a disproportionately high standard of living, while the nations of Africa languish at the poverty line. And the nations of South America are just coming into their own, after centuries of colonization by Europeans.
Today, there's not much plundering or colonization going on, but the damage has been done; the wealth has been realigned. The moral thing to do.....the Christian thing to do....would be for Europe and the United States to give back some of that wealth to the third world countries.
Wouldn't you agree?
Or do you prefer to adopt the neocon position of:
"Fuck the third world. We got ours. We worked for it. Plundering and colonizing is damn hard work."