How far has America progressed on its road to Empire?

[Heraclitus]

Yes but Athens exploited its allies to finance its own high standard of living.

[Dis]

I don't see the U.S. lasting another 20 or 30 years. We are about finished. Debt will consume this nation real soon. I heard by 2010 people will cease to loan us money. Which will require tax increases. This will destroy the economy as our entire economy is based on consumer spending.

Now if the republicans actually did what they said and reduced the federal goverment... perhaps we could reduce our debt. But no, George Bush is the devil. He is the reason our empire is on it's way out.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
Yes but Athens exploited its allies to finance its own high standard of living.

See what I mean?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
What constitutes an empire? It's more than having influence. We don't have vast lands that we took over.

Really perverse understandings of American history FTW!

[CrONoS]

Deleted:

Don't have the time & will to argue over that.

[BeBMan]

I've already seen it

[Sharpe]

America's been an empire since about 1898 or maybe 1901 - before then only the occasional president was dominant (name a relevant president between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt - maybe only McKinley comes to mind).

But since then presidents have been dominant in my opinion - also consider that in 1898 the US fought its first overseas war of conquest in the Spanish American War and their worldwide influence expanded from that point.

But the US is now clearly in decline - that decline has perhaps been going on for a while now (might have begun as early as the late 1960s or early 1970s), but definitely the signs of decay are clearly evident now. Right now the US is like Britain was during the years between the 2 world wars (don't think they've reached the post WWII Britain phase quite yet).

American influence and power are in decline and they are wrestling both with other powers rising to replace them as the dominant power, foreign powers challenging them and a myriad of their own domestic troubles. First of which is probably the widening gap between the rich and poor - it isn't as noticeable when the living standards of the poor and middle class are still rising over time, but for the past decade their situation has stagnated and the gap has become enormous.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Describe it as you like; the fact remains, we're not an empire, nor do we aspire to be one.

That's false on both accounts.

[Elok]

Yeah, the national debt alone is enough to send us down the crapper. Hopefully we'll be a peaceful, sleepy country that nobody can be bothered to pay attention to in the future. Like pretty much any country in central-eastern Europe, only with better hygiene. Of course it could all go bad and we could end up in a horrific civil war and the disintegration of society, but naturally I'm praying for the quiet slide into oblivion.

[Riesstiu IV]

I would say that the height of American power was in the 1950s. The dollar was supreme, we produced what we consumed including cars and electronics. We were a sell sufficient nation then able to meet our own needs.

Now the US is a sprawling nation of citizens absorbed with retarded media and sybarite lifestyles. Our position in the world for granted.

Just look at the US now. We have become the world's biggest shopping mall. We borrow money from the Chinese so we can buy Chinese crap and our politicians serve one interest or another, not the US that's for sure.

We can't produce a TV or an automobile worth **** anymore but we can still bomb the hell out of third world countries. I guess that's worth something.

For **** sacks just look a the candidates we have in this upcoming election. Is this the best America can do? Has our respect for intelligence sunk so low that people would actually support a ditzy soccer mom with absolutely no worldly experience and a cranky bottom of his class Vietnam Vet who can't even tell the difference between Spain and Latin America? Bush is hardly able to string a coherent sentence together.

I want a president who is more intelligent than me, who is articulate, and would put me to shame if I were to debate him. I actually wish we could go back to WASP dominated politics.

God damn baby boomers. Your generation has completely ****ed this country up and sold out at every opportunity because you got greedy. And I hope you baby boomers will be the first to die when the financial system collapses and your retirement savings evaporates.

Truth is, we could probably due for good Soviet Union style meltdown. I'm tired of seeing fat girls everywhere I go. At least a lower standard of living would make it harder for Americans to gorge on food.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Riesstiu IV
God damn baby boomers. Your generation has completely ****ed this country up and sold out at every opportunity because you got greedy. And I hope you baby boomers will be the first to die when the financial system collapses and your retirement savings evaporates.

If their parents wouldn't have sent them to Vietnam, and basically been authoritarian *******s in general maybe they would have grown up with stronger values.

[David Floyd]

Eisenhower had it right. He was sculpting the US military to be incapable of foreign adventures. He reduced the size of the army, and it was basically on the road to being little more than a nuclear tripwire. We wouldn't get ourselves into any wars under this system, because we would have been incapable of fighting little **** wars all over the globe, and if someone actually threatened us, we would have had the overwhelming nuclear capability to destroy them, and, possibly, the overwhelming ABM defenses to escape retaliation. Either way, though, with regards to ABM, no one would have messed with us, because MAD works.

JFK changed all of that. He's the one who started us down this road. He won election on a position he KNEW to be false - the missile gap - and furthermore, his opponent, Nixon, knew it was false. If Nixon had debunked it, he probably would have won the election - but Nixon couldn't do that, as it would have revealed US intelligence sources to the world.

So, it's the Democrats (JFK and also Robert McNamara) who actually started us down this road - it's the Republicans (Eisenhower) who had it right, to begin with.

[Jon Miller]

Current Republicans are different than Ike, or even Nixon. I would rather have either than the current President, and I possibly would rather have Ike than either option for president now.

JM
(Sometimes I believe Obama, sometimes I don't.)

[Jon Miller]

During the 1950s the income tax at the top was over 95% I think...

JM

[Riesstiu IV]

Today's Republicans don't even deserve to be called Republicans or Conservatives. It just goes to show you how easy it is to sway the American voter. All you need to do is apply some political label to yourself and hate the f*gs and you'll have the vote of middle America.

By the way, **** you middle America. You people add nothing to this nation. I hope your slutty daughter gets an abortion and your third child has downs syndrome.

I would punch a nun to have someone like Eisenhower as president in 2009.