Quote of the Day

I've been sitting on this quote for several days now, not knowing what to do with it.  I was debating calling this "Correction of the Day", and try to fix it, but in the end, I decided it would be better to comment on it instead.  It's from "The Rifle" by Gary Paulsen, and it's one of tha jabs he makes at America:

...and while he worked on the rifle, England--riddled in fear that the colonies in America would grow to dominate and outproduce and take over the world, which is exactly what happened--began to add taxes to Colonial produce and products to try to hold them down.

Now that I've written down the quote, it's not as bad as I first read it--I remember my anger focusing on the word "overproduce", which, upon closer reading is actually "outproduce"--but, even so, with phrases "dominate" and "take over the world", I still almost get a sense that  Mr. Paulsen kindof wishes England succeeded.

To give him credit, Mr. Paulsen also explains, in the same paragraph, that England forced monopolies on America, and forced their products to be priced "viciously low".

I, for one, am not sad that America outproduced England, and "took over the world"--although I wish we took George Washington's advice, and kept our noses out of other countries' business.  Even so, by outproducing England, and even the rest of the world, we've been able to avoid famine in our country, and help with famines around the world as well.  Indeed, most famines today are caused by governments!

It's sad that our government currently does a better job of holding us down than England ever did.

Mr. Paulsen also gives England a little too much credit:  they were, after all, a Colonial Empire, and they wanted to profit from their Colonies.  This is as much a motivating force of creating the monopolies they did, forcing viciously low prices on American goods, and taxing them however they could!