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Comment by nhchris | Hacker News Reader

It has nothing to do with ends vs. means, and I have no idea where you got that from. It is about reaching truth.

To give a simple example, the question is "Did the Umayyad caliphate bring new irrigation techniques to Spain? What was the overall balance between harm and benefit they brought to Spain's population?", and not "Do the new irrigation techniques justify their colonization of Spain?"

Somehow, we are able to dispassionately examine the harms and benefits when it comes to Islamic-ruled Spain. So why should we look at Britain's empire any differently?

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> So why should we look at Britain's empire any differently?

Same reason people aren't interested in objectively discussing the 'harms and benefits' the USSR brought to Poland[1].

Because there are people still alive who remember the occupation. A lot of them in fact. And the ones who weren't alive then are dealing with all the direct consequences thereof.

[1] Or of a Russian annexation of Crimea / the rest of Ukraine. Empires look kind of scary and nasty when you're on the receiving end of them.

> Same reason people aren't interested in objectively discussing the 'harms and benefits' the USSR brought to Poland

Because it's politically useful to demonize their enemies, got it. In any case, if someone openly isn't interested in an objective view of history, then by definition they've confessed to wanting only propaganda.

How is talking about ends justifying means remotely a reach? Direct quote:

"Then, in late November 2017, I published a column in The Times of London, in which I referred approvingly to Bruce Gilley’s controversial article ,'The Case for Colonialism,' and argued that we Britons have reason to feel pride as well as shame about our imperial past"

Neglecting what should be an obvious comment on Britons having pride in the results of colonialism (re: ends) despite the shame behind their ancestors' actions (re: means), the problem has never been related to how much evil benefits anyone. It's always been about how unnecessary evil is and the fact that there were always better options than evil.

"Pride as well as shame" is not "ends as well as means", it is "it caused good as well as bad".

Imagine someone saying that Nazis caused good as well as bad and not seeing how that necessarily translates to ends justifying means

Imagine someone saying the objective truth, regardless of what tortured implications someone wrings from it.

For example, the Wikipedia article on a different colonial empire, the Umayyad caliphate, is positively aglow with all the good it did (in addition to enslaving some of its subjects): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus

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