Reading the newest Harper's (December issue; not on-line yet, more's the pity). A review by Greg Grandin of Niall Ferguson's Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. According to Grandin, there's quite a price to be paid.
Ferguson's argument is that we (Americans) just aren't ruthless enough, yet. Which means, yes, we could have won in Vietnam, if we'd just had the belly for it. Now America faces "the growing power of liberalism" (don't you all feel better now?), which prevents us from exercising our true authority as the benevolent Empire the Romans...oh, sorry, the British, once were.
How to overcome this and other obstacles to the Pax Americana? Apparently by reining in the deficit by cutting Social Security and Medicare spending. The "less privileged" (Grandin's words, now) would be made: "leaner and meaner, more willing to shoulder the burdens of empire. Just as poverty drove the Irish and Scots into Britain's colonial army, 'illegal immigrants, the jobless,' and 'convicts' could help fill the ranks of Washington's imperial legion." (Apparently Jonathan Swift and Jeremiah were both wrong: poverty is good for sovereigns!). "Ferguson is especially enthusiastic that African Americans might become 'the Celts of the American Empire.' And once he dispense with what here passes for social democracy, he sets his sights on political democracy. Successful empires, Ferguson writes, require 'the resolve of the masters and the consent of the subjects.'"
According to Grandin, Ferguson is the "darling of the American media." Great. Wolf Blitzer's late night reading, I suppose. Makes one glad Bush isn't much of a reader; but he's surrounded by people who are, and who would take this half-baked crock of "thought" seriously. Which is what worries me. The "fringe" is moving more and more toward the center; which means, indeed, that the center cannot hold.
