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Optimism bump.

That's awesome.

And Geo. W. Bush made it happen.

By golly, he might just be better than Reagan.

Krauthammer at his inimitable best. It's long, but well worth the time expenditure. Thanks for posting this amazing piece!

Second, we are unlike Rome, unlike Britain and France and Spain and the other classical empires of modern times, in that we do not hunger for territory. The use of the word “empire” in the American context is ridiculous. It is absurd to apply the word to a people whose first instinct upon arriving on anyone’s soil is to demand an exit strategy. I can assure you that when the Romans went into Gaul and the British into India, they were not looking for exit strategies. They were looking for entry strategies.

Depends when he was talking. A number of the Roman's most significant acquisitions were areas they stayed in only because they had to and they loathed it and their senate railed against it. Note the surprise of the Greeks after the first major Roman intervention when Rome whipped the enemy (Was it Macedonia?) and then headed off so quickly without demanding land that you could have gheard a pilum drop!

Africa the same. Rome went souyth to defend grain routes and supplies against Carthage and to carry the war south. HAlf the time their presences began to safeguard trade and prevent anyone rwaching soil, then they'd get dragged into a war, fix it and leave and have to return., Eventually they stopped leaving.....However most of the early to mid Republican period was simply about keeping the peninsular safe. If that meant buffer zones and garrisons or intervening in other people's wars, well....eventually of course that attitude converted once they realised how lucrative in gold, grain and manpower the empire could be, giving us a permanent source of employment for the likes of Charlton Heston and co. ...

Rome didn't start off wanting to be an empire, it just happened as a result of changing attitudes, able people and a superb bureaucracy and mechanism of control.