Winning with Liberty
America has actually been emphatically un-imperial. Rather than making nations our serfs, we would have them as our friends.
Cruising the web led me to "Freedom through force" by Alex Massie, reviewing The Dominion of War by Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton![[*]](../toolshed/new-window.png)
. I have not read the book, but very much enjoyed the review.
Pivotal in the reviewer's analysis of the United States, from this Oklahoman's view, is this: "the ideas of the American Revolution were and remain as revolutionary as they are universal."
The reviewer understands that in one sense America is just another government among humans, with human evils, yet that Federalism is confronted constantly by the "Spirit of '76."
The reviewer mentions a Scottish historian's view that "the Americans have built an empire while avoiding the 'e' word pretty consistently, and that's always disastrous. There have been successes, but if you look at all the countries in which the US has intervened, the majority have not been success stories." Or, another possible way of looking at the sometimes "failure" of American foreign policy has been that America has actually been emphatically un-imperial. Rather than making nations our serfs, we would have them as our friends. If the idea is that free countries are defending ourselves by "exporting liberty and democracy," then to be a bit simplistic about it, only when the overwhelming majority of disparate peoples place the modern and necessary principles of universal equality above primitive tribal and sectarian divisiveness will they (not we) "succeed." People don't change like that overnight, although they may in as little as a generation.
. I have not read the book, but very much enjoyed the review.
Pivotal in the reviewer's analysis of the United States, from this Oklahoman's view, is this: "the ideas of the American Revolution were and remain as revolutionary as they are universal."
The reviewer understands that in one sense America is just another government among humans, with human evils, yet that Federalism is confronted constantly by the "Spirit of '76."
The reviewer mentions a Scottish historian's view that "the Americans have built an empire while avoiding the 'e' word pretty consistently, and that's always disastrous. There have been successes, but if you look at all the countries in which the US has intervened, the majority have not been success stories." Or, another possible way of looking at the sometimes "failure" of American foreign policy has been that America has actually been emphatically un-imperial. Rather than making nations our serfs, we would have them as our friends. If the idea is that free countries are defending ourselves by "exporting liberty and democracy," then to be a bit simplistic about it, only when the overwhelming majority of disparate peoples place the modern and necessary principles of universal equality above primitive tribal and sectarian divisiveness will they (not we) "succeed." People don't change like that overnight, although they may in as little as a generation.