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Okay, I was just doing some reading for one of my classes. Specifically, the class was British Empire. At this point in the class, we're going over the British Empire in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. What struck me as odd was Cecil Rhodes' view of the empire.

Some of them, it seemed, would never be fully satisfied until the whole world was British. Only when there were no foreigners would Britain be entirely secure from foreigners. This was the ultimate in imperialist paranoia.¹

I took this and thought about it for a bit. I came to a conclusion that that's actually not bad logic: if there's no one to fight, there will be no more wars. Still, why must we expand our borders before we stop seeing others as foreigners? Why not just put aside nationalistic views of what we consider alien and just realise that we're all humans.

I would go on a rant about how I feel that some Americans have trouble with regarding foreigners as less than themselves, but I've said enough for one night.

1. Bernard Porter, The Lion's Share: A Short History Of British Imperialism 1850-2004, 4^th ed. (Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2004), 134.