An American Empire?
By Rod Van Mechelen
Has the time come for America to rule the world? Not necessarily as a dictatorship, perhaps as an extended form of the democratic republic, but an empire nonetheless? While the very thought is appalling to most Americans, and certainly to most of the world, there are some persuasive reasons to consider it.
2003 Olympia, Wash. - Has America become an empire? Americans need to answer this question, and if we are becoming an empire, then to decide whether to support or oppose it, because the consequences of empire will be, to Americans more than anybody else, profound.
In A Republic, Not an Empire, Patrick J. Buchanan, a Conservative candidate for President in the 2000 general election, argues that "today, America's leaders are reenacting every folly that brought (the other modern) great powers to ruin."
He makes a persuasive case that America is acting like an empire, that historically empires always decline and fall, and this will be our fate as well if we do not resume the great American experiment as a democratic republic. He could be right, probably is, but this has not stopped others from promoting the idea of an American empire.
In American Empire, Andrew J. Bacevich argues that America has become an empire unlike any other, one "built less on coercion than on persuasion." While I'm inclined to attribute this more to the vast commercial power of corporations, the fact is that it's people who, through politics and law, create the conditions in which corporations operate, and in this respect it takes a political machine, even if, as William Greider noted in Who Will Tell The People?: The Betrayal Of American Democracy, through lobbyists and dirty deals, corporations exert undo influence over our government.
Greider's case motivated Reform Party founder Ross Perot to run for President, and in an August 8, 2003 Salon.com article, Micah L. Sifry reported that Perot "is positioning himself as a voice to reckon with in 2004." Never mind the inner turmoil of American politics, however, or the struggle against the concentration of power represented by commercial interests, the fact is that America is acting like an empire, and Americans need to decide if that's what we want to do.
In short, we need to decide whether we believe the time has come for America to rule the world, or at least to govern it, because for better or worse we already kinda, sorta are.
Empire: Evil or Empowering?
Is empire necessarily a bad thing? Generally, we Americans believe it is. In the Star Wars series, it's portrayed as the apex of evil. But has this always or even generally been the case?
Was the British Empire bad? Many believe so, but they fought their wars "sportsmanlike," according to rules, spread British values and the benefits of the Industrial Revolution to the far reaches of the world, and exercised restraint in their role as ruler. One could make a compelling argument that it was good.
What about the empire of Charlemagne, whose Holy Roman Empire restored order to Medieval Europe? Or William the Conqueror, whose bloody wars "laid the foundation for the economic and political success of England"?
Though we might condemn them today, history is rich with examples of empires that made life better, such as the Greek, Roman and Ottoman empires. Generally, empires have been a great civilizing force.
Popular portrayals of empire focus on corruption, intrigue and evil because these are the things that capture our attention, they are what we oppose, guard against, resist and fear. And by our present standards all empires were brutal, barbaric, vicious and violent. But then, though we like to think otherwise, the same can be said of most modern historical figures and nations.
For example, African American organizations like to harp on the "historical oppression" blacks have suffered in America, and they have plenty of examples to demonstrate this, but these depend on us ignoring the pervasive oppression in Africa today, not to mention the oppression, prejudice and brutality that can be found, and by present standards, condemned in every nation's history.
What's relevant is that, by the standards of their day, empires generally brought peace and prosperity to their time and place.
This, and the consequences to America, are what we need to consider as we ask whether the time has come for an American empire, because the time is almost upon us when we will have no choice but to choose.
Posted October 6, 2003
Ignorance or Envy? - On the surface, it was to be expected that Arnold Schwarzenegger would attack the American Indian tribes. Everybody "knows" that the tribes are a pack of Liberals and that individual American Indians vote Liberal and support all kinds of poverty packages. So Arnold's attack should have come as no surprise:
"Their casinos make billions, yet pay no taxes and virtually nothing to the state. Other states require revenue from Indian gaming, but not us. It's time for them to pay their fair share. All the other major candidates take their money and pander to them. I don't play that game." - Arnold and the Indians, Sacramento Bee, September 24, 2003
He may not play "that game," but either he's utterly ignorant of the facts or he's playing some other kind of a game, because while some Indian tribes, just like corporations and other organizations, have given money to political candidates, everything else he said is flat out wrong: Gaming tribes contribute millions of dollars to their local economies and employ thousands of mostly non-Indian Californians:
"The tribes' contributions process, now more defined by the courts, was a justifiable strategy since California's Indian nations have become large business owners who already share over $100 million dollars of revenue, skewed in favor of the state, and whose industries created over 40,000 jobs held by workers and vendors who pay over $280 million in federal income and payroll taxes annually." - In California and elsewhere, tribal futures will depend on communication, Sacramento Bee, September 25, 2003
In a nutshell, what Arnold said was both biased and wrong. Biased because he singled out Indian tribes, wrong because he didn't have his facts straight. But that's not the worst of it. He alienated people who, popular stereotypes to the contrary notwithstanding, could have been among his staunchest political allies.
Indian tribes are intrinsically conservative, made to seem liberal only because Democrats have portrayed themselves as protectors of the tribes even though both the GOP and Democrats treat the tribes like special interest groups rather than Americans who have inherited what amounts to a contractual relationship with the nation, much as Maria Shriver has.
In the Kennedy Family Trust, Mrs. Schwarzenegger has inherited a contractual relationship which provides its members with rights and privileges - money, family ties, properties - other Americans do not share. Just like American Indians. Socially, culturally, our tribal ties are our heritage, but legally, politically and financially, our tribe is our inheritance.
If this is a difficult concept for most Americans to accept, it is doubly so for us. As Indians, we often tend to resist this characterization because it ignores our heritage and, more significantly, the international nature of our status: Members of tribes have dual citizenship, we are citizens of both our tribe and the United States. The legal nature of our status, however, is such that the greatest defining difference between American Indian tribes and, for example, the Kennedy Family Trust is that the Trust is domestic in nature while, legally, the tribes are more international, though demographically few American populations have served the United States with greater patriotic fervor than Native Americans.
Though nobody envies the poverty that plagues Indian Country, many envy our inherited relationship with the United States, and the supreme irony is the degree to which otherwise Conservative Americans oppose this inheritance while Liberals, many of who otherwise envy and oppose the inheritance with which many conservatives are born, align themselves in defense of the inheritance of American Indian tribes.
Yet, the fundamentally conservative nature of American Indian tribes should make them attractive political allies to Conservatives. As long as Republicans like Arnold ignorantly attack our people, however, that support will be slow in coming.
References and Recommended Reading
Note: In the original 2003 version, I linked to an article on lucidcafe.com by Robin Chew about the Holy Roman Empire. The site has since gone defunct. You can read the interesting story about that website at Coffeegeek.tv
Regards
Rod Van Mechelen
Rod Van Mechelen is the author of What Everyone Should Know about Feminist Issues: The Male-Positive Perspective (the page now includes several articles by other authors), and the publisher of The Backlash! @ Backlash.com. He is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and served for 9-1/2 years on the Cowlitz Indian Tribal Council.
