Rome was effectively an empire well before the transition was made de jure. The USA has been effectively an empire since WWII. It is not something to fault America for. The alternative does not involve survival as a nation. The transition to de jure empire will include wholesale loss of rights but not necessarily of freedoms. The government may leave us all alone to do our business but there would no longer be any “rights.” Freedoms would be purely at government sufferance. In that case we would be far better off as a real Big Business Oligarchy than as a Democracy derived Bureaucracy. Bureaucratic totalitarianism is more likely in the cards.
I'll say again, it's pure hogwash to call America an "empire" in the same sense that ancient Rome was an empire, or Britain & France had empires.
All that does is distort both the definition of "empire," and the reality today.
Take for example: in the year 1900, both Britain and France proudly proclaimed themselves "empires." Both were then functioning democracies, and France the constitutional Third Republic. In those days, the empires they ruled over were actual empires, and were NEVER confused with their VOLUNTARY ALLIANCES.
So, by 1914, France and Britain were allied with Russia against the German, Austria-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. None of these ALLIANCES among empires were EVER themselves called "EMPIRES." In other words, the Triple Alliance was NEVER called "The German Empire," and the Triple Entente was NEVER called the "Franco-Russian-British Empire."
Do you not understand the point? American today has MANY ALLIANCES. We have no serious EMPIRE.