This article about a new imperialism leaves me unconvinced, expecially in its use of Kiplings' "The White Man's Burden" and its racist overtone. Empire suggests that, like Rome, and most European powers who took Rome as their great model, all of the provinces are governed by appointed adminstrators from the center. If the U.S. were an empire, we wouldn't have had to worry about France and Germany's votes on the U.N. Security Council, or any other country's vote, for that matter. There wouldn't be a U.N. The U.S.S.R. was the last true empire.

Citizens of the U.S. would be overjoyed to bring home troops from Japan, Korea and Europe, but we tried isolationism before WWII. We have become the only Superpower left, not because we sought to rule the world, the opinions of Noam Chomsky notwithstanding, but because we didn't want to repeat the world wars of the 20th Century and because following WWII we were the only power capable of standing up to the Soviets while our allies were rebuilding.

If we were an empire, none of the European nations would have become socialist. It's ironic therefore that so many of the socialists here and abroad and to the north, blame us for the failure of their own economies to match ours. It is the same excuse which has been sold to the Arab nations, as well. The failure of Islam in those nations to keep up with the West has made the Arabs hate Western civilization all the more, because, according to the fundamentalist religionists, this wasn't supposed to happen. Islam was supposed to sweep the earth and turn it into a Muslim paradise. There are only two explanations for such failure: a lack of sufficient righteousness (hence Wahabism) or the inconceivable, Islam is not the truth. No one who has given his life to study of the Koran and the Hadith, and owes his power and position to that knowledge, is going to admit the second possibility. Democracy would mean the abandonment of Sharia, and is therefore out of the question. So these countries have either become subject to the Ayatollahs, the Mujahadeen and Talibans, or to fascist dictators.

Islam was supposed to be the ultimate empire, ruled from Mecca and Medina, but it has failed, not only because the West outpaced it technologically, militarily and economically, but because the Arabs are incapable of uniting. The first four caliphs were killed, either by religious radicals or by treacherous underlings. It took the Turks who were converts to Islam to createe the Ottoman Empire, whose greatest strengths were its pursuit of science and culture and toleration of other religions of the Book.

America is an Anti-empire, just as it began as a federation of independent states who freed themselves from colonialism. Their success eventually resulted in home rule and independence for all of Britain's former colonies. Whenever it conquered another country it has set about restoring its independence on democratic principles.

Of course, those who believe in Marxism as mankind's ultimate destiny, will hate that, and insist that spreading freedom and democracy around the globe is just another sneaky way to centralize U.S. power.

Call it Jefferson's Burden, if you want to, because we believe that democracy and a Bill of Rights (including, not incidentally, secular government recogniizing religion but disallowing any one sect from wielding political power) is the best thing for all mankind, but that is evangelism, not empire.