[detbuch]

As this thread is winding down, I would like to more clearly reply to JohnnyD and Spence re: "modern day imperialsm" and "somewhat imperialistic" describing our invasion of Iraq.

Classical empires, though brutal (what wasn't in their time), hastened the uniting of people and created good as well as ill. The 400 years of Pax Romana was beneficial. The British Empire brought progress and union, and the U.S. is a direct result. In the 1960s the radical left saw opportunity to influence the counter-cultural revolution and anti-Vietnam war sentiments in its direction. Its only real power to influence a generation of youth was through words, especially by the politicization of words. One of the most influential words was IMPERIALIST. The nasty trick of slick, politicized language is to slide a word away from its original meaning and use it to describe a loosely similar entity--sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. The dictionary definition of imperialism (the policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other natioins) didn't quite fit but was close enough, so America was described by the hard left as an imperialist, capitalist running dog pig. This also had the effect of erasing any positive connotation. Imperialism was now thoroughly bad. The radical view could not survive but politicized words did. And imperialism evolved into the many modern day imperialisms--economic imperialism, cultural imperialism, military imperialism, religious imperialism, political imperialism, ACTUAL imperialism, or, now any new imperialisms we wish to create. How about new ones like, say, family imperialism, relational imperialism, baseball imperialism, gender imperialism, sexual imperialism, racial imperialism, insurance imperialism, and on and on. Obviously, this destroys any connectioin to the original definitions of imperialism except for a shadowy similarity. The word, essentialy, loses any intrinsic meaning, This is similar to what George Orwell says in his essay "Politics and the English Language" about the word "fascism" no longer having any meaning other than signifying "something not desirable."

Certainly, it is good to criticize us when we do bad. But can we think of a better word than imperialism or imperialistic? We are not an empire. We don't have an emperor. We haven't territorially acquired Iraq nor established economic or political hegemony over it. Saying that our action in Iraq is modern day imperialism is using a politicized word that has lost all meaning and retained only some vague inflamatory connotation. It sounds authoritative to say that invading Iraq is modern day imperialism, but what does that mean? It is convenient to use the phrase because it excuses you from saying what that "something not desirable" actually is. And when one cannot find words to describe a supposed concept, that often implies that the concept does not actually exist--at least not in some well thought-out thesis. Unmuddle your thinking, then you can give us the hell we deserve. And saying that the invasion was "somewhat" imperialistic is not only hedging on whether it was or not, but it is qualifying a meaningless dead metaphor. What really does "somewhat imperialistic" mean? The hard left, on the other hand, is happy to throw a politicized metaphor that means "something not desirable" at America to influence the uninformed masses who are easily persuaded by the sound of words regardless of their lack of substance. For those with some historical insight, however, such phrases are an insult to our intellilgence.