That's actually precisely Enlightenment Leftie's qualm.
NRx Leftie says it's different this time, because the British Empire were fairly savage themselves, because they actually didn't value the people who they considered savages as human beings. NRx Leftie said that the British Empire actually worked out fairly well, by some standards. and the bad bits were because the Brits themselves had a savage culture.
Enlightenment Leftie calls bullshit why should it be different this time, and that's pretty much why I don't really buy NRx.
(My inner Conservative-Churchill thinks the British empire was actually a net good and my inner NRx-Right adds that the independence movements triggered by liberalism are what really fucked us over.)
The British Empire may have been materially a net good, but (as Benedict Anderson points out) it was doomed the day it embraced Macaulay's plan of cultural exterminationism through education.
"Independence movements triggered by liberalism" is a better way to put it than "independence movements", but it's not as accurate as "independence movements triggered by the combination of something involving the creation of an elite class educated in European things, often actually in Europe (or America), and later the Cold War scramble for p...
Through LessWrong, I've discovered the no-reactionary movement. Servery says that there are some of you here.
I'm curious, what lead you to accept the basic premises of the movement? What is the story of your personal "conversion"? Was there some particular insight or information that was important in convincing you? Was it something that just "clicked" for you or that you had always felt in a vague way? Were any of you "raised in it"?
Feel free to forward my questions to others or direct me towards a better forum for asking this.
I hope that this is in no way demeaning or insulting. I'm genuinely curious and my questioning is value free. If you point me towards compelling evidence of the neo-reactionary premise, I'll update on it.