The North Coast times-eagle., July 01, 2005, Page 10, Image 10

P A G E 10
EMPIRE AS A WAY OF LIFE
Within tha, framework, let us examine certain ideas that
guided the development of our imperial way of life. Christianity
was once a vital part of Western European expansionism. It
provoked and justified all kinds of imperial activity: accumulating
capital by conquest, striking terror into the hearts and minds of
the heathens who wanted to keep their wealth for themselves,
and forcibly changing others people's ways of life the better to
convert them to the true religion. I am more concerned here,
however, with three ideas developed by secular British leaders
tha, came ,0 define so much of our own imperial outlook.
BY WILLIAM APPLEMAN WILLIAMS
From the beginning, our imperial way of life seduced
us into assuming that we could go on forever projecting the
present into the future: that we could start over again and again
and again. F. Scott Fitzgerald understood that when he had
Jay Gatsby speak these lines. “Can't repeat the past," he cried
incredulously. “Why of course you can."
That traditional assumption was elevated into a blind
faith by the tremendous absolute and relative power that we
Americans enjoyed after 1945. We came to think of ourselves as
being beyond history — beyond being human. Secretary of State
Dean G. Acheson expressed the feeling perfectly in his attitude
that “only the United States could get hold of History and make it
conform." It was not simply our military and economic power over
other societies; it also, and perhaps more importantly, involved
the way we allowed our technological accomplishments to
fragment the essential continuity— the process— of life. The
most obvious example is television, which defines experience
as disconnected episodes without significant relationships or
consequences. A terrifying distortion of reality certified by Walter
Cronkite’s daily Hail Mary: “And that’s the way it is." But in truth
it is extremely difficult to imagine anything further from the way it
is.
We can see that dramatically illustrated by our response
to events in Iran, the West Bank, Afghanistan, and in America
itself. Our intellectual, political and psychological confusion is the
result of our ahistorical faith that we are not now and ever have
been an empire. Yet there is no way to understand the nature of
our predicament except for confronting our history as an empire.
That is the only way to comprehend the Iranian demand that we
acknowledge our long-term interference in their affairs, the wide­
spread anger about our acquiescence in the progression of
Israel's settlements on the West Bank, the Russian charge that
we apply one standard to them and another to ourselves and the
deep resentment of us among the peoples of the poor countries.
The only way we can come to terms with those matters is to look
our imperial history in the eye without blinking, flinching or walk­
ing away into the wonderland of Woodrow Wilson's saving the
world for democracy.
Let us start with a workable definition of empire: the use
and abuse and the ignoring of other people for one’s own welfare
and convenience. Now in truth, America was born and bred of
empire. That does not mean we are unique; indeed, just the
opposite. We are par, and parcel of the imperial outreach of
Western Europe that came to dominate the world Bu, therein
lies the irreducible cause of our presen, predicament. We
have from the beginning defined and viewed ourselves as
unique. The differences between ourselves and other nations
are not incidental bu, they are irrelevant to the fundamental
issue. We are different only because we acquired the empire
a, a very low cost, because the rewards have been enormous
and because until now we have masked our imperial truth with
the rhetoric of freedom.
Bu, we do have a benchmark. Once upon a time,
about a century before America was rediscovered by Christopher
Columbus, a, leas, the fifth time someone had done it, the
Chinese sen, seven massive fleets westward to Africa and
perhaps on into the Atlantic Ocean.The ships measured between
400 and 500 feet, and there were enough of them to carry
upward of 37,000 people Their so-called junks were impressive
intercontinental missiles The Chinese came, they traded, they
observed. They made no effort to create an empire or even an
imperial sphere of influence. Upon returning home, their reports
engendered a major debate. The decision was made to burn and
otherwise destroy the great fleets and concentrate on developing
Chinese society and culture.
The point is no, to presen, the Chinese as immaculately
disinterested, or whiter than white It is simply to note tha, we
now know that the capacity for empire does not lead irresistibly
or inevitably to the reality of empire.The Chinese, driven south by
the Mongols and other invaders, could easily have rationalized
empire as necessity. They chose instead to defeat the invaders
and develop their own culture in its almost infinite variations on
the two themes of Confucianism and Taoism.
No so with Western Europeans, including our (primarily)
English forefathers. They were no, content with exploration and
nonviolent intercourse with other cultures. From the beginning,
the Western Europeans wen, for global empire. We Americans
were conceived and born and bred of tha, imperial conception
and way of life. We can explain that, even defend it, but we
cannot deny it.
Tha, phrase, that idea — way of life — puzzles some
people and upsets other people. A way of life is the pattern of
assumptions and perceptions, and values, methods and obect-
ives, that characterize and guide the actions of a culture. Here
are three amplifications of tha, definition:
“We stabilize around a set of concepts...and hold them
dear. A, each moment of each day we make the same mistakes."
“Those unconsciously accepted presuppositions which,
in any age, so largely determine what (people) think about the
nature of the universe and wha, can and cannot happen to it.”
“Ideas tha, we do not know we have, have us. And they
shape our experiences from behind, unbeknown."
TV j ETTT' R E L E A S E
CD ONLY
$9 USA
$ n canada / mexico
$13 WORLDWIDE
POSTPAID
John Locke provided a fine summary of two of them in
one classic paragraph. Wealth, he explained, was not defined
by having what one needed but by having more than one's
neighbor. That neatly doubled the relative advantage. The third
proposition was most strikingly formulated by Sir Francis Bacon.
The worst kind of domestic disorder was caused by “the rebellion
of the belly.” Expansion was the only sure way to prevent that
kind of threat to the social order. It not only generated economic
growth, it dispersed potential troublemakers and decreased the
density of discontent.
The American leaders who made the Revolution and
the Constitution were familiar with all those imperial ideas. And
in Virginia, for example, men of property had realized the value
of imperial expansion for controlling the white poor long before
Patrick Henry began talking about liberty or death. Indeed, the
dialogue between other Virginians provides an excellent insight
into the development of an imperial way of life.
James Madison never discounted the importance of
economic expansion, commercial or territorial, but he stressed
the need for surplus social space to avoid political turmoil when
he advanced his famous argument about extending the sphere
in defense of the Constitution. In denying the conventional wis­
dom that a republican government could survive only in a small
state, Madison was implicitly arguing that empire is the price of
freedom.
It is sometimes maintained, of course, that Madison was
never explicitly imperial. Not only do his actions deny that but
so do all the contemporary arguments against his theory. Robert
Yates, along with many other critics of the Constitution, saw
immediately tha, it would create an empire. A Northerner noted
in sadness, “We wish ,0 make a noise in the world,” and pleaded
with his readers to face up to the truth that “extensive empire is a
misfortune." George Clinton of New York reasserted the validity
of the classic argument about size and democracy in a stinging
analysis of Madison's imperial logic. But, as with others, he
ruefully concluded the appeal of empire would carry the day.
For his part, John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia,
was devastating. He began by mocking Madison’s euphemism
for imperial expansion — “extending the sphere." Of course,
agreed Taylor, republicanism could in theory be extended over
“spacious spheres." Bu, only if one did not count other cultures
as involving real people, only if the added spheres were truly
equal republics, and only if the central government was predi­
cated upon an effort to encourage humanity’s good propensities
rather than control its evil tendencies.
He then warned that Madison’s Constitution satisfied
none of these requirements. It created an “iron government”
guaranteed to favor “evil moral qualities" and to generate war
upon war. And since the decision for war was in the end “unsub-
jeCed ,0 publick opinion,” opposition to war was in effect defined
as “an opposition to the nation itself." That rendered “useless of
impracticable the freedoms of speech and of the press."
Whatever the sometimes almost incomprehensible
convolutions of his prose or the embittered railings of his
frustrations, Taylor understood that America had embraced
an imperial way of life. He knew, Thomas Paine to the contrary
notwithstanding, that the United States had no, begun the world
over again. No wonder he ultimately lost his respect for Thomas
Jefferson.
Jefferson was far too intelligent no, to understand Taylor.
Indeed, ,00 smart no, to recognize the meaning of the Chinese
decision tha, I have described. He alluded ,0 tha, in one letter
and, sensing the implications, quickly dropped the subject. In
that respect, and it is an important one, Jefferson was much
more like us ordinary folk than either Madison or Taylor.
Jefferson wanted to have i, every way imaginable. He
wanted ,0 be the best hope on earth. He wanted to civilize the
heathen. He wanted Florida and Canada and the res, of the
continent. And he wanted to institutionalize the decentralized
face-to-face community as opposed to the impersonal society.
That brought Jefferson eyeball to eyeball with Madison and
Taylor settle for wha, one needed or go for empire.
He knew the meaning of the anguish about i, all, but he
went for empire. Half honestly and half dishonestly. The hones,
part was saying empire is necessary for freedom and social
order as defined by Locke and Bacon. The dishonest part was
asserting empire did not subvert freedom. So between them,
Jefferson and Madison used their sixteen years as President
to institutionalize empire as a way of life. Taylor wen, home
and gave it all up for lost.
Make no mistake about it: the imperial way of life
produced the promised rewards. I, generated great economic
wealth and effectively limited the scope and intensity of social
discontent. By the time James Monroe left the White House,
the United States had asserted its predominance throughout
the Western Hemisphere and was well entrenched in Hawaii.
Bu, we must also report the costs. I do no, for a moment
dismiss the people killed and the property stolen, bu, I would
suggest the greatest price was paid in the coin of our sensitivity
about wha, we were doing and how tha, was understood by
SEND INQUIRY TO
SANDSHRIMP@EARTHLINK.NET
VAN PUSEN BEVERAGES
ASTORIA, OREGON
325-2392