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Originally Posted by bongodriver
so with that in mind, could you explain to me why every time a Brit celebrates surviving a conflict and coming out on top (with help....nobody denies it), fighting against a widely aknowleged force for evil, we just get labeled as Nationalist idiots with an 'empire mentality'
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Being concerned about maintaining colonial empires AND freedom and democracy at the same time is tended to be raise doubt, especially if in practice it means mean that a small group of privileged being have all the rights and 99% of the others don't. Being concerned about the freedm German-occupied Poles but not Soviet-occupied Poles, and state of democracy in Europe but not in India, Egypt, South Africa (... its a long list) tends to make people believe you're just another imperialist, who happened to realize he just met the bigger dog in the neighbourhood..
Probably has to do a lot with Churchill - he seems pretty concerned about maintaining the largest colonial empire at that time.
"What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.
But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour."