From American Thinker comes this appropriate assessment:
Can Niall Ferguson Save Civilization?
Harvard professor Niall Ferguson first gained mainstream notice for his 2003 book Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World that dared to present a fair-minded appraisal of imperialism, virtually an act of treason to the curia of radical scholars who view the age of empire as a one-sided matter. To them, the colonial powers were evil, malicious exploiters of indigenous peoples held captive by European plutocrats motivated by greed, plunder and glory. The other side of the equation has been ignored for over a generation.
This view suited the radical creed disseminated by the Soviets during the Cold War, who pounded out propaganda emphasizing that the workers paradise mandated constant struggle against “imperialists.” Perhaps this was a cogent point during World War 1, when the Bolsheviks took control of Russia and pulled out of the conflict between colonial powers engaged in a ludicrous blood-letting generated by territorial jealousies. But the epithet continued to be used as a bludgeon by KGB “active measures” propaganda against the “main adversary”, the United States. Beginning in the 1930s and through World War 2 when the USSR was our ally, the depiction of the US as an imperialist power picked up in earnest from the Korean conflict in the early 1950s, into the Vietnam War from the early 1960s to 1975. Not until the disintegration of the USSR did the accusation abate.
