the never setting sun

October 25, 2005 12:23 PM

What does modern history have to teach us about the age of American empire? The final chapters of the British Empire offer lessons and parallels aplenty. Empires don't last forever, and the combination of martial victory, popular ennui, and liberal anti-patriotism is a dangerous mix for a superpower.
posted by four panels (40 comments total)

liberal anti-patriotism

Patriotism is typically defined as "love of country."

Now, the $64k question: is country defined as "the government" or "constitutional values?"

Depending on how you answer the second question, "anti-patriotism" can be either sensible or moronic.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 12:40 PM on October 25, 2005

Well, the first article out of the Weekly Standard does make for a plausible hypothesis, but it fails to really strengthen into an encompassing theory.

There are many theories and books written about the decline of the British empire. Yes, liberal disdain for war and conquest are often cited as one reason - but there are many others. For a far better critique of collapsing empires one should read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Part of his argument is that excessive liberalism paid a part...as did things such as overextension of the army, cronyism, mysticism and a myriad of other factors.

Anything in excess is a bad thing, from food to war mongering.
posted by tgrundke at 12:42 PM on October 25, 2005

First, I have not read the piece in its entirety. I stopped when I read that a major cause of the closing down of the British Empire was "was the waning of confidence on the part of liberal British elites, whose pacifism evolved into anti-patriotism.": Does anti-patriotism mean thatgiving ujp empire to thosw whose lands had been ruled was a huge mistake? Thus, the British Madate given to the UN created Israel and offered a state to the Arabs (turned down); the rule in India gave way to a great democracy in that country and the creation of another country , Pakistan. And Ireland?

After all, had the liberal elite not been such wimps the Brits could still be ruling the world and keepin America out of Europe, enableing the British to defeat Germany et al on its own during WWII...friggin liberal elites. Will they nver learn to govern countries all over the world for theilr own good (their meaning British!)
posted by Postroad at 12:45 PM on October 25, 2005

Am I anti-patriotic because I don't have a flag lapel pin or a flag on my car?
posted by birdherder at 12:58 PM on October 25, 2005

No SUV magnet? You dirty liberal! If you were a hard working, God fearing, REAL American you would have several, all of them positioned to resemble a Jesus fish.
posted by Talanvor at 1:05 PM on October 25, 2005

Bill Kristol is a neocon hack. Period. This is just part of their smear campaign, and injecting fear into the minds of the public is a basic tenet.

Dick Cheney is the Anti-Patriot.

Chicken hawk. War profiteer. Proponent of torture. Agent of foreign governments and wetnurse to the idiot son of an asshole.
posted by jsavimbi at 1:07 PM on October 25, 2005

When your leaders betray a country's core values in the pursuit of their own aggrandizement, what's the patriotic thing to do?

Patriotism is the last resort of the scoundrel. - Samuel Johnson - 1775

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.—Ambrose Bierce

posted by jasper411 at 1:09 PM on October 25, 2005

The TWS article is typical tripe, filled with stupid analogies. WWI and Viet Nam? Both were horrible, but c'mon, the difference in scale is massive. Boomer presidents have had problems? Sure they have. Non-boomer presidents? Coolidge? Harding? Herbert fucking Hoover? These are our shining examples of leadership?

It's sad that TWS gets taken seriously by anyone.
posted by bardic at 1:13 PM on October 25, 2005

Yes, the British Empire was a very powerful thing, but does that mean that it was, ipso facto, worth preserving?

Indeed, the pre-World War One social order allowed a number of empires to grow (and form alliances with each other). This system of alliances was one of the direct causes of WWI - a war which didn't especially seem to make sense to anyone.

I don't think that many people in the 21st century really understand the full horror of World War One. When the article cites a whole generation of lost leaders, they mean this in a very real sense. At the start of WWI, friends were allowed to serve in the same regiments as each other. In other words, a bunch of lads from Liverpool could all sign up to fight along side each other. If their regiment was sent over the wall, this meant that Liverpool lost pretty much all of them.

The people of England were not seduced into believing in some peace loving philosophy by evil liberal elite. They were living in towns where an entire generation of young men had been entirely obliterated. Imagine living in a town where virtually every young man between the ages of 18 and 30 had been killed in a war that didn't make any sense - a war that really was more about national pride than about any sort of strategic gain.

The linked article tries to make a parallel between this horrifying loss and with the Baby Boom generation's Vietnam experience. I don't think what America went through comes even close to the experience of post-WWI England (or Europe).

The British Empire was bloated and sick - as were all five of the major European empires before WWI. WWI sounded the death knell for all of them. Monarchy (and the strict social order that came along with monarchy) was still the order of the day. After WWI, the old Kings and Emperors gave way once and for all to more modern forms of government. What this writer sees as the anti-Patriotic rise of the liberal elite was, in my opinion, the rise of the democracy over the monarchical (i.e. conservative) elite.

Yes, the British lost an empire, but the average British citizen's lot has improved since the Empire fell - to say nothing of the lot of the average Indian citizen, etc.

---

Also, as much as I dislike the current direction the U.S. is heading, I think we are still a far cry from empire. In my opinion, the main point of writing and publishing this article may be to provided "evidence" that standing against Bush and the war is, somehow, truly going to destroy America.

"Au contraire," I cry, "it will save America."
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:15 PM on October 25, 2005

Wouldn't martial adventurism, popular partianship, and ultra nationalism also be considered really bad for Empires?

I'm wondering when the "If you're a liberal then you're an atheist that wants to destroy America" meme is going to be staked and buried. Maybe after Hannity, Coulter, Limbaugh, et al retire?
posted by Talanvor at 1:15 PM on October 25, 2005

This is a fairly well-thought out article, but there's a fundamental point that he fails to apply properly. When discussing the American unwillingness to accept absolute rule over another nation, he forgets that Bush has made repeated claims about the rightness of our intervention being derived from his personal relationship with "God". Whether to believe such claims or not, or dismiss them as pandering, is a point that needs to be discussed but is not addressed in the article.

If Bush is taken at his word, then it becomes irrelevant whether Americans have the desire to exert the force of rule- so long as the leaders desire it it will continue. The struggle between Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurd has existed for hundreds of years, and just like our occupation it has no end in sight.

I realize that today the Iraqi constitution was signed, and that we technically don't exert the rule of law there, but that is irrelevant when we're handling the majority of the security work there (although not providing exceptional security, although I recognize that this is a difficult job) and when we control the vast majority of the military power in Iraq. So long as we maintain that control we are effectively in power, and considering the tumult and instability that define Iraqi society right now it seems we'll be in power for some time to come, whether the public can stomach it or not.
posted by baphomet at 1:21 PM on October 25, 2005

But why love your Nation-State? There are two possible answers. The first--because it's MY Nation-State (and that of my Father's, hence Patriotism) is thoroughly irrational. The logic of that justification boils down to this: BECAUSE. The second argument about why to love your Nation-State is because it stands for "noble" principles: freedom, equality, justice, etc. Rather than digress into a debate over the relative merits of freedom vs. equality, let's just assume that these noble principles are in fact "noble", and worthy of our support (whatever they may be). Accepting this assumption highlights the logical fallacy of the second argument: there is no justification for transference of "love for a noble principle" to "love for a Nation-State that exhibits that principle". It MAY justify a love for the policy of a Nation-State that upholds such a principle as individual freedom (for example), but no matter how many times one iterates this process it never makes the final leap of logic to justify love for the Nation-State itself.

— Jeff Vail, "Love Your Nation-State!" 5 May 2005
posted by jefgodesky at 1:25 PM on October 25, 2005

And come to think of it, are we thinking of ourselves as an "empire" now? Considering we fought a revolution against one, I'm a little worried by the idea that we would proudly announce that we are now an empire.
posted by Talanvor at 1:26 PM on October 25, 2005

Gibbons is somewhat overrated. Every empire eventually collapses due to diminishing marginal returns on complexity. See Joseph Tainter's 1988 The Collapse of Complex Societies.
posted by jefgodesky at 1:27 PM on October 25, 2005

These crybabies still wish they lived in the 1800s. Well maybe they should be tossed in a time machine, forced into the peasant class, and have to shit in a bucket.
posted by destro at 1:29 PM on October 25, 2005

Liberal elites ruined Britain as a hyperpower. Could America meet the same fate?

Hopefully, yes.
posted by signal at 1:31 PM on October 25, 2005

Considering we fought a revolution against one, I'm a little worried by the idea that we would proudly announce that we are now an empire.

I know; the view of America as Empire is to my mind unnatural and just about the most anti-patriotic idea out there. I wish we still had one of these.
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 1:35 PM on October 25, 2005

And for the record, IMV it was probably as much missionary zealotry and going on ridiculous crusades after holy grails and other fictional treasures that probably did the British Empire in as much as any creeping liberalism.
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 1:37 PM on October 25, 2005

The amount of intellectual sophistry in that Weekly Standard article is impressive. Can the author even tie his shoes?

Now apparently America is an empire (not even a de facto one! I guarantee this idiot would howl in protest if a member of the "liberal elite" called America an empire). The British situation (a real empire, mind you) a century removed is identical to ours, we are led to believe, or at least "eerily similar," even though the author provides the kind of evidence that shows watermelons and apples are the same (they're green! they have seeds! See, the same!). WWI and Vietnam are paralleled, despite being obviously and vastly different in scope and reason. And then there is his quite stupid little trick that a "liberal elite" in the British empire somehow compares, in any way, to a "liberal elite" in the American "empire."

Did guy this eat lead paint chips as a child? What editor allowed this dreck to get published?

The rest of the links, though, are interesting, but that stupid Standard article was a lame jumping off point for the discussion.
posted by teece at 2:41 PM on October 25, 2005

I guarantee this idiot would howl in protest if a member of the "liberal elite" called America an empire

Give the neocons their due, they are consistent. They have not only been calling America an empire for some time, they encourage the use of the label. See Max Boot's "Case for American Empire," also from the Weekly Standard, from 2001.
posted by jefgodesky at 2:51 PM on October 25, 2005

teece: rule number one for defeating an opponent is to understand thy enemy. For those who rail against TWS and conservativism in general they have to read such articles to get an idea of where these people are coming from. The general idea here is that for a people to prosper, they must do so through conquest and control. They must always maintain a fighting spirit.

I do agree with you that the TWS article can be torn apart on many levels in a nanosecond. It hardly holds water. Joey Michaels makes a very salient argument above and also demonstrates how, in my opinion, many conservative writers tend to boil complex situations down to very simplistic black and white arguments without taking nuance into question. Michaels' comments about how whole towns were slaughtered going over the wall goes far to demonstrate how and why the English may have grown tired of the sacrifices required to maintain an empire.

Indeed, European governments were old and crusty and WWI was indeed the break with the past that led to the development of more constitutional democracies that we see today.
posted by tgrundke at 2:58 PM on October 25, 2005

The Third Reich was intended (by its supporters) to last a thousand years. It lasted twelve. Perhaps the German liberal elite was insufficiently patriotic?

The New American Century, now ... I wonder how long that's going to last.
posted by cleardawn at 3:09 PM on October 25, 2005

The categorization of America as an empire is rather murky. I think its a lot easier to simply say sole super power, hyper power, etc. That country with all the money and guns, etc.

Also at issue with that article is that one does not have to be a pacifist to support non-intervention abroad. Why can't the threat come from ultra conservative isolationist? Beware Buchanan, rarr!
posted by Atreides at 3:53 PM on October 25, 2005

For more information on empire, history, and how the two often mix in a very dangerous way, I highly recommend Resurrecting Empire by Rashid Khalidi, partly because I'm friends with his son, mostly because it's damn informative.
posted by dsword at 4:28 PM on October 25, 2005

Which comes first, "liberals" not "believing" in the power of a country, or the country starting to lose power?

I mean, can people really destroy a country just by failing to stand during "God Save The Queen", or is it more likely that people might fail to stand during "God Save The Queen" because they see the Queen heading for destruction?
posted by davejay at 4:40 PM on October 25, 2005

"Anti-patriotism" is an interesting term. A whole straw man argument in a single word.

The implied, but unstated (because obviously false) premise is that all true patriots want their country to invade and occupy other countries, killing anyone who objects - that is, to become an empire.

Anyone who doesn't want that must be an "anti-patriot" - a traitor, by implication - and, into the bargain, a member of the "liberal elite" - that is, people who are highly educated, but not quite intelligent enough to understand the subtle reasoning of rightwing imperialist nutjobs.

The Right keep on churning out this kind of propaganda, it fills the newspapers and TV channels, but does anybody really fall for it?

As most of the posts in this thread indicate, it takes only a little effort to see exactly what they're doing and why, and to frame an effective counterpoint.

Napoleon, Hitler, Bush: are these really patriots, serving their country? Or are they rather traitors, anti-patriots, recklessly sending other people's children on pointless, expensive and risky imperial adventures?
posted by cleardawn at 4:59 PM on October 25, 2005

I do find it oddly absurd that an article pretending to didactic certitude could omit the lesson of Ireland. The breakaway of one-quarter of the United Kingdom drove a stake through the heart of the British Empire that acted as a centripetal explosion that drove apart its constituent entities. Not for nothing did India adopt the Irish tricolour flag as its new national flag.

And in point of flag, it was the evil genius of Michael Collins who invented asymmetrical urban warfare in Ireland in the late teens. Ireland had had other "conventional" rebellions, many in fact, and the most recent one only a few years earlier in 1916. But all had been singularly unsuccessful, as was the Boer's struggle. However, it was Collins who realised that only a campaign of unrelenting savagery could even hope to succeed. He used assassination, car bombs, intimidation, and guerilla warfare to eliminate the British tax base and reduce the functioning of the British State in Ireland to below sustainable levels. He had no intention of ever trying to defeat the British Army or their Irish proxies in open combat. As much as possible, he avoided being drawn into any positional warfare. His aim was simply to outlast the occupation forces and wait for domestic and world opinion to force the occupier to the negotiating table.

Every national stuggle against overwhelming odds since 1920 has used his techniques, and every counter-insurgency campaign has walked right into the same trap that the British Empire found itself in in Ireland from 1919 to 1921.
posted by meehawl at 5:02 PM on October 25, 2005

(i call godwin on cleardawn.)
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 5:11 PM on October 25, 2005

Napoleon, Hitler, Bush:

wait--i take my godwin back... this kind of comparison is actually starting to look like fairer game all the time...

(tucks tail between legs, whimpers...)
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 5:51 PM on October 25, 2005

The Right keep on churning out this kind of propaganda, it fills the newspapers and TV channels, but does anybody really fall for it?

I guarantee you there are millions upon millions of Americans that fall for it.
posted by teece at 6:42 PM on October 25, 2005

Upon more millions.
posted by baphomet at 7:05 PM on October 25, 2005

What a flaming mass of crap. Last is really trying to eqaute the widespread rise of pacifism after WWI to the fall of the British Empire? He must be a complete idiot to ignore that WWI left every country invovled in it (with the exception of Johnny-Come-Lately America) battered, bruised, and reeling from the fact that modern warfare was becoming increasing suicidal for all sides.

Plus, the article is like a wierd reverse-Godwin. Instead of calling his opponets little Hitlers, Last is calling them little Chamberlains.
posted by TheSpook at 9:40 PM on October 25, 2005

I read a book that had a similar theory about how the US is now in a declining phase similar to the end of the British Empire, but it was much more convincing. Basically his thesis was that there have been a pattern of wealth accumulation that has repeated four times starting with the Spanish empire, moving to the Dutch overseas empire, then to the British and finally to the Americans.

This pattern was to start lots of investments in developing manufactured goods in the home country using resources from overseas empires. This initially leads to the building of huge material wealth. But after awhile the elite become more involved in financial speculation and as the economy becomes entangled in that speculation, capital starts leaving and that is a sure sign for the beginning of the end. This last phase also was often accompanied by apparent military superiority over all rivals.

The thing is I took this book on a long trip and left it somewhere because I finished it and it was too heavy to carry. For the life of me I can't remember the author or the title, though I've wanted to get another copy for awhile now. Anybody know what book I'm talking about?
posted by afu at 11:04 PM on October 25, 2005 [1 favorite]

Every empire eventually collapses due to diminishing marginal returns on complexity.

Does that mean that the farther a government gets away from its basic constitutional rules, and the more cute ways people figure out to take advantage of the system, the weaker the nation gets? Because it seems to me that is one of the biggest problems with governments. People are always smarter than systems, and over time they will figure out ways to subvert it or exploit weaknesses in the system to fatten their own pockets and/or power.

At the end of the day all these folks want is for the US to be the wealthiest nation in the world, no matter the cost to other nations. They love their lifestyles and they are deathly afraid that these lifestyles will be jepordized if America does not subjegate and/or dominate the rest of the world with hard power. In their mind, there are no win-win situations, only master and slave relationships, and they are damn right certain that they do not want to be the slaves.

Now, there is a certain rationality to this, in the sense that no one should want to be a slave. But the whole thing is based on the premise that international relations are a zero-sum game where there can only be regional/national winners and losers. There is, however, no reason to believe that this premise is true.

Thus, no matter how rational and correct their subsequent logic, their whole argument is based on false premises, and therefore wrong.
posted by moonbiter at 4:39 AM on October 26, 2005

But what if we got all the liberal elite to start calling the US, the American Empire and say that the conservatives are succeeding in destroying it? How might that effect the public arena?
posted by donfactor at 9:08 AM on October 26, 2005

Who the hell is this liberal elite anyway? Let's remind ourselves of where Bush and his party really stands when it comes to "the elite":

"This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores," quipped the GOP standard-bearer. "Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." --GW Bush
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 10:54 AM on October 26, 2005

afu - is it Niall Ferguson's Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire you're thinking of? Ferguson's argument is that, although you can quibble over semantics - "the US isn't an empire, it's a superpower" - or over definition - "empire involves direct rule/dictatorship etc" - there are many respects in which the US's actions are more or less imperial. He also argues that this is not a new process - that the US isn't beginning to be an empire, but is possibly at the end of its imperial life. He sketches out a series of US foreign policies starting with the Phillipines, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and ending with Iraq today.

My own view is that none of this is particularly controversial. Some of the characteristics of US engagement in global politics - mixture of direct and indirect rule of other states, overriding concern for access to resources, the role of US culture, entertainment and products in spreading its influence - are hard to describe in anything other than imperial terms, even if they don't add up to make a "classic" empire. That is why if you look at the US in structural terms, it is very instructive to compare it with the fate of other empires. Where it gets much more controversial is Ferguson's contention that this system actually provides a viable system for securing international prosperity. It's his contention that it's the best hope for a stable 21st century, but he laments the fact that, in his view, the US is unlikely to stay an empire for much longer.

The first linked article itself only tells one side of a pretty huge story. To equate some of the pacifism that was prevalent in the 1930s to the cause of imperial decline massively ignores the fact that there were all sorts of visions of empire in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. You only have to read some of the debates between Disraeli and Gladstone in the 1870s, or look at the publications of some of the min-nineteenth century free traders or radicals to see all sorts of different conceptions of what Britain's relationship with the rest of the world should be. But at its root, the British empire continued because it was politically and financially lucrative. When it ceased to be either of those things, it faded away.

This argument also applies to the US, I think - its foreign policy will soon start to get even more politically and fiscally expensive. In political terms, we are seeing some of that already. In fiscal terms, we are likely to see the results very soon. The generation that grew up in the 1950s will soon start collecting welfare benefits, while the number of people paying tax will not increase at the rate necessary to fund it. The US Treasury have calculated that there is a $45 trillion shortfall between all the US Government's future costs and its future revenue (if current trends continue to apply). Given that upping taxes or cutting welfare is not the best way to get elected, it will almost certainly be the cost of funding an imperial/interventionist foreign policy that gets cut to make up for some of the shortfall. That to me is the key reason why current US policies will not stay the course - and why, if the US is already an empire, it will not remain one for much longer.

So, there's hope for all the anti-imperialists yet...
posted by greycap at 11:29 AM on October 26, 2005

Hadn't realised the thing about the Indian flag/Irish flag link. I'd always assumed it was a communal colour scheme, but apparently not (link to my blog to save space here).
posted by athenian at 1:36 PM on October 26, 2005

Bill Kristol is a neocon hack. Period. This is just part of their smear campaign, and injecting fear into the minds of the public is a basic tenet.

Dick Cheney is the Anti-Patriot.

Chicken hawk. War profiteer. Proponent of torture. Agent of foreign governments and wetnurse to the idiot son of an asshole.

I find your comments intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted by fraxil at 2:11 PM on October 26, 2005

fraxil, you'll also enjoy these, er, important writings of Chairman Bob.

All-seeing eye dog, I have to call Godwin on Godwin's Law. One good recursive shove, and it vanishes up its own history-denying asshole.
posted by cleardawn at 8:05 PM on October 27, 2005