Pretty much everything you believe in, from reason and science to human rights and individual freedom, was born in Europe. The scientific revolution and the European Enlightenment made the modern world. You talk about colonialism. EVERYONE practiced colonialism. The Babylonians, Mongols, Zulus, Aztecs, Incas, Chinese, Mughals, Arabs, etc, etc all colonised and enslaved their neighbours. Modern China is an empire ffs (just ask the Tibetans or Uyghur Muslims). Young people are taught that Native Americans were peace-loving hippies. In reality, they were horrifically cruel to those they defeated in wars or raids. Rape, mutilation, torture and mass killing were the norm. The human race only began to emerge from savagery in the 18th-century. Until then, slavery and public torture were universal. There never was a golden age. There never was a peace-loving tribe ‘living in harmony with nature’. It’s a myth believed in by masochistic western liberals. I’m not ashamed to be British at all. Any nation that can produce Francis Bacon, John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, Isaac Newton, William Wilberforce, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell and George Orwell is alright by me. Find me a nation or culture that can produce a list like that! Such people helped create all that’s good in the modern world.
Had Britain never practised colonisation, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand would not exist in their present form. Instead, you’d be at the mercy of China, Russia and Iran. Would you prefer to live in such a world? Imagine if Europe and North America vanished in a puff of smoke and you now lived in a small village somewhere in the middle of the Eurasian land mass. Would you feel safer and happier than you do now? Why not put down the Guardian, switch off the BBC and try actually thinking for yourself.