Empire Straits

Just a quick note on TMcD's latest post in the Great Empire Debate. Not only does the tenacious one quote (!) from Orwell's Lion and the Unicorn, despite my belief that I was the only living person to have actually read this book, but he gets the matter pretty much right. I would just say, again, that the problem here is really an ambivalence about POWER.

But this really is an ambivalence. Consider that during the 2004 campaign, when Howard Dean (oh, how I love that little Scrappy Doo) said that "the United States would not always be the most powerful nation in the world," or something like that, he was excoriated by the rightwing and others. It would seem that many, many people in this country would like to remain, forever, the most powerful nation in the world, but would hope that no one would have the, um, indelicacy of pointing out that (obvious) fact in public.

Btw, if you didn't read Paul's must-read comment to the TMcD post, you're some weird freak who doesn't read comments.

BBtw, not nearly enough comments on the A-Team question below. My A-Team still needs a Face Man, a B.A., and a Howling Mad Murdock. And no, Paul, pardoning the A-Team would not be an abuse of power, because as the prologue of the show always made clear, the A-Team was accused and convicted of a crime they didn't commit. They were acting under orders when they staged their daring daytime robbery of the Bank of Hanoi. Now, those orders have always struck me as, perhaps, an abuse of power . . . .