The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘American Empire’: The Ultimate Strawman?

Posted on | May 4, 2012 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

Brian Koenig posts on Bill Ayers, Chicago bad boy at large, discussing the end of the ‘American Empire’:

One of the great dangers that we live in right now, is I don‘t think there’s any question, and I don’t think any of you would question, that the American Empire is in decline – that economically, and politically, and in some ways culturally, that we are in decline.

All me to vent. What ’empire’, Bill? Show me anything in our founding documents that would lead you to conclude the U.S. is ‘imperial’.
Koenig concludes:

The economy may be in turmoil, as well as our nation’s fiscal status. So there may be a dose of reality to his argument. And if government bureaucrats continue to spend beyond our means, as well as continuing to elude the skyrocketing debt of entitlements — which, note, Ayers’ subscribes to — then maybe he, quite ironically, has a point.

The point to be made here is that, by the power of technology to disperse information rapidly, and expose creeps like Ayers, the power of the Constitution to make the American government serve the people is coming to the fore.

Sad little academics like Bill Ayers, spouting fallacious arguments of ‘American Empire’ are going to have a very hard time doing finding patrons to keep them spewing their idiocy. CAESAR SI VIVERE AD REMUM DARERIS, by which I mean, in a real imperial situation, something sad and permanent should have long since happened to him.

He decries the nonexistent ‘American Empire’, while pining for the kind of fascist ‘Social Justice’ that could only come through imperial means! Restated, if he truly cared fig #1 for liberty, he’d probably sound closer to Ron Paul, and be railing against the Federal Reserve. In contrast, Bill Ayers has spent his days under the sun attacking the minds of youth, and helping to propel Barack Obama to the Presidency. Thanks for your Constitutional support, Ayers.

For the record, I would refer to American prominence over the last century as hegemony. It is true that, having the dollar as the reserve currency after Bretton Woods, and the might of the American military after the National Security Act of 1947 have given the U.S. a heavy hand in world affairs. And, sure, we’ve used it. But calling this last century of U.S. history ‘Empire’ both overstates U.S. power and understates the complexity of the modern world. I can tell you that the U.S. very sincerely supports the duly elected Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. To say that the U.S. in particular, or NATO in general, has behaved ‘imperially’ in that part of the world is false and insulting to all those who served there.

The idea of an ‘American Empire’ is truly a strawman’s strawman, and ist tantamount to saying to an audience: TU STULTUS ES. To which his audience should reply, ‘Thanks for nothing, you Commie creep.’

Wolverines!

Category: Blogging

Comments

5 Responses to “‘American Empire’: The Ultimate Strawman?”

  1. Bob Belvedere
    May 4th, 2012 @ 8:17 am

    If The United States Of America is an Empire, it sure as Hell is the worst practitioner in history [and herstory, of course].

  2. Quartermaster
    May 4th, 2012 @ 8:40 am

    Seward, Sec State under Lincoln, disagreed with you Smitty. He told the British the US is indeed an empire. The war of northern aggression was an imperial war of conquest.

  3. Charles
    May 4th, 2012 @ 9:53 am

    Bill Ayers obviously has spent his post-Weatherman days watching The Decline of the American Empire over and over again on DVD.

  4. ThePaganTemple
    May 4th, 2012 @ 2:55 pm

    When that punk dies, the conservative blogosphere should erupt in celebration. Does anybody know how to make graphic of a champagne bottle completely with popping corkscrew and foam gushing out? If so, get to work, because when this piece of shit dies, I’ll damn sure use it. And so should everybody else.

  5. Opinador Compulsivo
    May 5th, 2012 @ 12:40 pm

    “Empire”, a 2006 essay by Bill Whittle, is the definitive smackdown to that nonsense. Accept no substitutes.