Jamaicans to Britain: Please Take Us Back

For years and years liberals have argued that the solution to global poverty is more and more free money from Western countries, despite the clear results of the bazillions already spent, rather than better governance, free enterprise, and the rule of law.   More recently, some liberals mugged by reality propose such novel notions as "charter cities" in places like Haiti and Africa, paid for and administered by the "international community" (read: "The West").   Sounds like a grasp back to running colonies in the third world.  Here's a good, realistic overview of the whole mess:  The Global Poverty Paradox by Nicholas N. Eberstadt at Commentary Magazine (October 2010).

Now comes a report that the downtrodden people of Jamaica, largely the descendants of African slaves, see the return of the British colonizers as a solution to their chronic dysfunction (link):

Most Jamaicans believe they would be better off if they were still ruled by Britain, a poll shows.  In a harsh indictment of nearly 50 years of independence, 60 per cent of those surveyed hanker for the days when the country was Britain’s biggest Caribbean colony.  Only 17 per cent said the crime-ridden, poverty-stricken nation would be worse off under British rule.  The depth of feeling is particularly astonishing as generations of Jamaican leaders have portrayed the British as oppressors who subjected the Caribbean to slavery.  The Queen is still Jamaica’s head of state. Under the headline ‘Give Us The Queen!’, the Gleaner – Jamaica’s biggest newspaper – said its poll showed how much people had become ‘disillusioned’ with the violent and corrupt political gangs running the island.

Re-colonization by the Britain of 1897 would certainly benefit the Jamaicans, but that Britain disappeared during WWI, so too late for that.  Today's Britain has neither the will nor the money to run its own island well, let alone any others.  

H/t John Hinderaker at Power Line (link), who notes the wisdom of the Cayman Islanders, who voted to remain under the Brits. 

John M Greco

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