THE PROVINCIAL PRESS OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE........or Thanks for My Newest Cats Litter Liner

NEW YORK -- The New York Times, a little behind the times, officially declared the United States an empire last Sunday.

"Today," wrote Emily Eakin, in the newspaper's Week in Review section, "America is no mere superpower or hegemon but a full-blown empire in the Roman and British sense."

That is something of an understatement. The United States is, in fact, now the greatest empire, militarily, economically, technologically and culturally, that the world has ever seen. We have the power, and are using it, to force other countries to adopt (or pay lip service) to our ideas of market capitalism and political democracy. That, after all, is what words like "globalization" really mean.

That is why we are in Afghanistan (news - web sites), moving troops and equipment from all over the world, to punish barbarians who have dared to challenge not only our borders but also our values. And that is why the whole world, including the leaders of his own political party, is demanding that President Bush (news - web sites) "do something" to bring order to the Middle East -- just as the Romans and British had to deal with the contentious factions centered in that small part of the known world.

There is a reason the Times and the rest of the American press is about 10 years late on the biggest story of our times. As American power has spread over the globe like weather, the American press has been going the other way, becoming more and more provincial, as accountants and market researchers both have argued that Americans don't care about foreign news and there's no money to be made collecting it.

On Sept. 10 last year, for instance, the Times itself had only 40 correspondents in 26 bureaus outside the country. The Los Angeles Times had 26 correspondents in 21 countries and The Washington Post had 26 in 20 countries. No other American newspaper had more than 10 foreign correspondents. Important regional newspapers -- the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, The Dallas Morning News, the Baltimore Sun and The Boston Globe -- each had five reporters posted around the world.

Television news, practically a contradiction in terms, had huge audiences and miniature staffs. Between them, ABC, CBS and NBC had only 24 correspondents, most of them based in London, where they could grab a plane to fly to other countries where they generally knew neither the language nor the geography of where they were. CNN listed 30 bureaus and 55 correspondents, a number it planned to reduce, most of them part-timers. As for the newsmagazines, once flag-bearers of the American way, Time and Newsweek had a combined total of 28 correspondents overseas.

In fact, the largest numbers of foreign correspondents from American news organizations were spending all or much of their time gathering business numbers from foreign stock exchanges and multinational corporations. Bloomberg News listed more than 200 bureaus, many manned by part-timers, while The Associated Press had 150 men and women in 100 bureaus. The Wall Street Journal had 119 correspondents in 40 bureaus.

So it was appropriate that the most extensive recent discussion of the reach of modern American power appeared not in an American publication, but in a British international journal, The Financial Times of London. The writer, an American, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, wrote there:

"Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power. The Pax Brittanica was run on the cheap; Britain's army was much smaller than European armies, and even the Royal Navy was equal only to the next two navies -- right now all the other navies in the world combined could not dent America's maritime supremacy. Napoleon's France and Phillip II's Spain had powerful foes and were part of a multipolar system. Charlemagne's empire was merely Western Europen in its stretch. The Roman Empire stretched farther afield, but there was another great empire in Persia and a larger one in China. There is no comparison."

For better or worse. And more and more Americans believe it is for the better. Max Boot, an important Wall Street Journal editor, wrote recently:

"Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets. ... We are an attractive empire, the one everyone wants to join."

That is pretty pompous stuff, Victorian really. But that does not mean it is untrue. A lot of the world may not want Americans around, but they do want American protection. Read Saudi Arabia. And the fact is that much of the developed world has forgone military spending, training and equipment development in favor of presumed American protecti

Everyone knows this, I could say, in sweeping pomposity of my own. But they don't. We are the ones who don't really understand how much the world has changed since the Cold War, even as our president declares the right to send American troops and drop American bombs anywhere we damn please. We are doing this, he says, for the good of self-defined civilized truths and values.

Americans simply don't know what is happening because of a failure of my business over the past decade or so. If we are to be an imperial power, we need a press that can find its own way outside of Washington, New York and London. Ignorance is not bliss when the sun never sets on American power.

Actually there are many differences between the Roman Empire and the British Empire on the one hand, and glorious America on the other. Both the Romans and the Brits colonized, by force, other countries all over their known worlds. America hasn't done that, has never had much interest in the rest of the world.

But leave it to the New York Times writers to be utterly ignorant about history.

They all undoubtedly thought an education is what you're taught in school. The rest of us know you merely learn a few skills in school with which you thereafter continue as much education as your own individual brain can manage.

What the New York Times and all other socialists here and elsewhere hate about America is our INDIVIDUAL, GOD-GIVEN FREEDOMS and the prosperity that brings us.....which makes everyone else want the same.......and the socialists can't provide it. They look like such FAILURES while we exist. So they want to destroy us.

They all undoubtedly thought an education is what you're taught in school.

The rest of us know you merely learn a few skills in school with which you thereafter continue as much education as your own individual brain can manage.

This imho this is profound and why degrees are sometime overated.

It's tough to get a handle on Reeve's attitude from this piece. Is he simply stating fact, or is he bing critical? I can read it both ways. But his main point, though he only hits it at beginning and end, seems to be that he's not happy with the lack of representation of the American press in other countries so as to report on what we're doing.

And to address his terminology, I don't see America as possessing an empire, at least not in the conventional sense. We haven't conquered and kept any foreign lands. We don't control vassal states from which we exact tribute. What we have is an all-pervasive presence and influence that just sort of leaks out and permeates the crevices of every society. A lot of them resent us for it. The Brits addressed it during WWII by saying that the Yanks were overpaid, oversexed, and over here.

The truth of the matter is that there aren't any other kids on the block for us to play with. Everything we do is big and has a ripple effect on the world. This effect is often misinterpreted as "meddling" by those countries. If one of our businesses goes into another country it either is or becomes the biggest game in town. This causes jealousy and instigates others to work against us. As one of the posters said, our form of government has allowed us to become prosperous and enjoy freedoms others can only dream about. In short, no matter what we do, we will be a source of hatred for all time and in constant danger of attack. It will never stop.

Post # 9: You're right, El. The U.S. has the power to impose its paradigms on everyone else--does--and probably should. But nothing makes people madder. People will kill to protect their cherished paradigms.

Once in a Liberal enclave on the West Coast, during a silly game, the other players went into a frenzy, talked of lynching me, and refused to speak to me again (some never did to this day)--because I ignored the assumptions of their paradigm.

Americans love new ideas and foreign cultures; America absorbs them hungrily; but our basic values are the best. I realize that this is typical, classic American arogance, but I think we should go into the pockets of resistance and violence and say basically, "This is how it's going to be done," imposing just solutions. That's what we did after defeating the Third Reich and the Japanese Empire, and everyone's all the better for it.

You are somewhat right but I don't think we even have to go in and impose our values. We are large and successful enough and the values, products, and rewards of doing things our way is so seductive to the majoriy of the rest of the world, we only need to give them a democracy and lots of media and we will win anyway. They will get "the fever", a desire to have the rewards of being like us.

That is why I believe we should be allowed to assasinate leaders of other countries who give us problems. Usually they are the ones who try to keep the people from getting "too much" of America. We challenge their authority and their "ways" just by being us. They people all want to be like us because they see you really can be what ever you want. Not always a great thing to the power structure of other countries.

This is not bad at all. Look at the two main antagonists from WWII. They got "the fever" by our close association with them cleaning up after the war. Now neither of them even want to have an army of any power. Like wise our allies. We weren't able to impose as much on them as we did the bad guys but they still caught "the fever" and we in effect weekened them too. We are a powerful force by just being citizens of our country. Everyone wants the security we enjoy and the benefits of a strong economy that goes with it.

So I don't think we need to go in and actually force anything, just eliminate those who would prevent the citizens of their land from wanting and trying to be like us. We will acheive the what you suggested without having to occupy or subdue a whole country and tell them how we want them to be. Just eliminate those who would prevent that from happening.

...we should be allowed to assasinate leaders of other countries who give us problems...

We don't assassinate world leaders because we don't want them to try doing the same to us. Once we started it would be a vicious cycle of killing. Don't respond that our security is good enough to protect our leaders. Nothing can stop a well trained well equipped killer who is willing to sacrifice his own life to take out a target.

Oh, I'd say we have more than a presence in the world. We've bombed another country on average every 2 1/2 years since WW II. Call me a bumpkin, but that's more than a mere presence. What we have is a different kind of empire, commensurate with the times and our resources. We don't thump folks to take them over, we thump folks so as to obtain/retain the resources to thump more folks to access more resources ... well, you get the drift. We don't export our values, we export the antithesis of our values. Is there a dictatorship in the world we haven't supported? The middle east is full of autocratic govs we're propping up. I wouldn't call that exporting values, well maybe I guess, if our values have changed a tad. And it seems they have, since I'd have a difficult time recognizing conservatives on any the boards of the republic, for instance.

Yes, of course you are right, J. I meant to say that conquest and unconditional surrender should be a last, desperate resort, as it was in World War II. And seduction is certainly preferable to...well...forced submission. And you are right that leaders often prevent the people from receiving our message and achieving the American Dream.

However, some problems are so deeply embedded in the culture and so widely endorsed by the people that no amount of inspiration or persuasion is likely to solve them. Such problems may not respond to seduction.

The Israeli/Palestine conflict seems to be one. Islamic fundamentalism may be. Racism may turn out to be one, particularly in Asia. Slavery in some parts of the world may prove to be such a problem. Others will surely appear on the horizon in due time.

In such cases, the best solution might be for a powerful and just force to impose a just solution, militarily if necessary.

You are certainly right that we challenge the authority of some nations and their leaders and the "ways" of many people simply by being who we are. Surely the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysbure Address, the United States itself are among the most subversive things ever to grace the earth. And Americans are the most revolutionary people the world has ever known. People who cherish their satus quo can be expected to resist the U.S. and its influence--which is not to say that they are wise to resist.

It seems to me that the gentle approach is best, as you say. But if that doesn't work, we'll probably have to go to plan B.

Well I didn't mean that we did it alone--f'cryin' out loud. Nobody respects the Russians more than I do. I am well aware of Stalengrad and Leningrad and the debt the world owes the Russians. And the British! And the French! Especially the French Resistance! And the Duch Resistance! And most importantly the German Resistance!. I could go on and on and on...and maybe I should.

Anyway--I meant we in the pleural (can you have we in the singular?). You don't have to be so touchy.

I meant to include all of the good people who defeated the Nazis and their ilk and all the good people of the world, past, present, and future, who mean well for all mankind. Not just Americans. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Lots of Americans don't mean well for all mankind.)

Just because I'm a typical, arrogant, not very articulate American slob, you don't have to get so mean and nasty about it. F'crying out loud.

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