I think Jonathan Chait is right about the broader implications about the conservative view of history in their fixation on Obama’s supposed “Kenyan anti-Colonialism.”
Wouldn’t this theory mean that our Founding Fathers were also twisted by opposition to British colonialism? Or maybe the idea is that we had a right to throw off the British yolk, but the Kenyans should have put up with it, because the British occupation there was so much more benign.
It’s either that it was “benign” or that conservatives believe primitive Africans should have been grateful enough to the British for bringing the light of Western civilization to their savage land that they should have surrendered all right to self-determination. The latter isn’t so much being “enamored of British colonialism” as it is being enamored of racial hierarchy.