An American Empire? Mississippi Black Codes, Eugene Debs Speech, Woodrow Wilson's Speech to Congress in April, 1917.

Essay by justathoughtUniversity, Bachelor'sA, March 2006

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Mississippi Black Codes of November 1865, Eugene Debs' Speech delivered in Canton, Ohio in June of 1918, and his imprisonment afterward, and especially Woodrow Wilson's Speech to Congress in April, 1917 in order to take a nation into war, make me think of an empire in the making, disguised as a democracy. After about two centuries of empire building, United States is rather close to acquiring total hegemony over the entire world, or is it?

The American Empire, unimpeded by any imperial rival, tells the rest of the world to go to hell, and now, by the millions, people of the world are itching to return the sentiment.

It's amazing when you think about it, but in less than two slim terms, the Bush administration and its neo-conservative bunch, have pushed the nation into a New Era, one which will bedevil the US for generations. By pushing the nation into a bogus war, by essentially taking over a nation based on lies and pretexts, the country will have to wrestle with the nettling problem of Iraq for years to come.

It doesn't matter who becomes president in 2008. It doesn't matter which political party controls the Congress. (As if it really matters now!).

One writer, Tony Judt, in an article in *The New York Review of Books* (July 14, 2005), quotes a comment he heard from a senior "and rather conservative" Spanish diplomat, saying:

"We grew up under Franco with a dream of America. That dream encouraged us to imagine and later to build a different, better Spain. All dreams must fade, but not all dreams must become nightmares. We Spanish know a little about political nightmares. What is happening to America? How do you explain Guantanamo?"

In this apparent era of imperial fever, Judt has criticism for historians, the...