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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

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cperciva·

No nation is exclusively good, but I would challenge you to name a nation which did both more good and less evil.

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Than the United Kingdom? The obvious answer in line with my comment is Ireland.

I won't argue with the statement that Ireland did less evil than the UK.

I'm unclear how you can justify claiming that Ireland did more good than the UK.

More good does not mean less evil. Or vice versa.

I mean, they did supply a substantial part of the world's independence days...

With its own wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_have_...

And most of those were voluntary, not armed rebellions.

And how did they become part of the British Empire in the first place?

but I would challenge you to name a nation

This sort of thing is way offtopic, come on. It's puerile flameframing.

I mean, you might be able to make some kind of argument about the good outdoing the evil (I think it would be hard, but hey, I won’t call a line of argument impossible until I see it happen). But, the idea that it would be challenging to name a country that did less evil than GB is pretty ridiculous, right?

Most countries didn’t have colonial empires, so GB is pretty high up there (arguably not at the top) in the evil rankings.

Sure. The UK has done a lot, both Good and Evil. There are lots of countries which have done less Evil than the UK. There are some countries which have done more Good than the UK. I can't think of any country which is on both lists.

I don’t think it is really quantifiable. Like if I say France, how would anyone adjudicate that? In terms of “good,” both contributed in WW2, both made some contributions to the concept of liberal democracy…

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