Pejman writes:
We want to pursue this particular dream that we have, and we would like it if the world left us alone to pursue it. We don’t particularly lust for an empire, or for hegemony – we take up the task of superpower out of a sense of obligation, not out of a desire to bestride the world like a Colossus. There is no song exhorting “Rule Americana.” Many of us would be perfectly happy to be able to drop all of this superpower stuff, and take our society closer to the principles and ideals that bind us as a nation.
Then, something invariably intrudes on that dream. Something inevitably threatens those ideals. Something unfailingly presents itself as a mortal peril to America.
Something inevitably gives the imperial politicians what they crave: a pretext to denounce those of us who’d prefer to shrug off the White Man’s Burden.
One doesn’t hear much on Memorial Day about the lies that Presidents told so that Our Boys could have an opportunity for dulce et decorum.