It makes sense when viewed as: people only care about us vs them tribal crap. The modern era and access to information just puts a veneer of "reasoning" for justifying their own BS.

Are you thinking of the Philipines or Puerto Rico? Hawaii was never colonized by the Spanish.

That said, I don't mind to refute the larger point. In fact, I would make Puerto Rico independent in conjunction with recognizing Taiwan.

Only 5% of Puerto Ricans want independence, in recent years there has been a push towards statehood though (and now a majority support statehood over their current status of free association)

https://web.archive.org/web/20121109002017/http://div2.ceepu...

Puerto Rico should be granted statehood, not independence, unless you want it to be an impoverished client of the United States.

Unlike how it is now?

It might have been clearer for "be" to be "remain".

I responded to your other post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24558926. It's more important to valorize independence regardless of what's actually best for Puerto Rico. Any paternalism no matter how honestly felt will defeat the purpose of this gesture.

My proposal is "bleeding heart realpolitik", and bound to thus illicit confusion in the US.