Doomed Empire

by Charley Reese
by Charley Reese

We now have, just as my Confederate forefathers predicted, an imperial government in Washington. We are the only country in the world that has military forces permanently stationed all over the Earth.

All imperialism, even the American form, is ultimately based on social Darwinism, a belief not openly stated these days that we are a superior people and therefore must inevitably rule in one way or another the inferior others.

Earlier in the last century, this was openly admitted. Read this quote from Frederick Courtney Selous, a British colonialist who played a large role in establishing Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

"Matabeleland (a part of future Rhodesia) is doomed by what seems a law of nature to be ruled by the white man, and the black man must go, or conform to the white man's laws, or die in resisting them. ... The British colonist is but the irresponsible atom employed in carrying out a preordained law – the law which has ruled upon this planet ever since ... organic life was first evolved upon the earth – the inexorable law which Darwin has aptly termed the Survival of the Fittest."

Of course, today there is no Rhodesia, and Zimbabwe is ruled by black people, as is all of sub-Saharan Africa. The British Empire, upon which in the past the sun never set, no longer exists. What happened to the survival of the fittest?

Well, intellectuals, whether British or American, are inevitably out of touch with reality. It didn't seem to occur to them that even a person who couldn't read Latin or solve a simple equation could nevertheless wield a machete and shoot a rifle. An illiterate man can eradicate a lot of intelligence, experience and education with one 10-cent bullet. He can undo the work of years in a second. The Europeans didn't voluntarily abandon their colonies. They were driven out by people they had considered inferior.

The code word we use for superiority these days is "democracy." It is democracy that is superior to all other forms of government, and therefore we are doing people a favor to spread it while, like the British, exploiting their natural resources and cheap labor. We will eventually meet the same fate as the British. The Philippines have already kicked us out. Sooner or later, the Japanese will tell us to get out of Okinawa and other parts of Japan. Even one day the South Koreans and the Germans will say, "Go home."

And we should go home without even being asked. As long as we play the game of empire, we are both bankrupting and corrupting ourselves. No empire in the history of the world has ever lasted beyond a few centuries. While the president plays his futile fiddle tune of spreading democracy, our domestic problems multiply. The debt piles up. The trade deficit piles up. Money, manpower and resources are gobbled up by the world's largest military-industrial bureaucracy. Staggering deficits are growing in terms of future obligations for Social Security and Medicare.

We desperately need a president and a Congress that care to look no farther than our Pacific and Atlantic shorelines. We are neglecting our problems while trying to solve problems in other people's countries. It seems to me that the people in Washington either are so far out of touch with reality that they are ready for the booby hatch or are so corrupt that they deserve to wear orange jumpsuits. A proper foreign policy, as outlined by George Washington, deals only in state-to-state relations. It does not meddle in the internal affairs of another country. It does not take sides in its feuds and quarrels. It seeks only fair trade and nothing else. It avoids alliances with foreign countries. It obligates Americans to defend only themselves.

It is a national disgrace that so many thousands of Americans have died in wars that had absolutely nothing to do with the safety and security of the United States. What the imperialists in Washington are doing by abandoning the wisdom of our forefathers is proving that they are certainly not the fittest to survive.

August 8, 2005

Charley Reese [send him mail] has been a journalist for 49 years. Write to Charley Reese at P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802.

© 2005 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

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