Negative. We are many things, constantly changing. You don't get to write off the past 11 years, even if we may want to.
The past 11 years have done more to turn America into a police state than Adams, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt combined. That's saying something.
Serious answer coming below...
There are worse instances of imperialism in American history than Iraq and Afghanistan.
Its not just the wars, we've always thought violence was the solution to everything. Well, we actually tried the peace route for the US Revolution and the War in 1812 (It failed, both times) but in every war after that we haven't tried to. We've always been an imperialistic culture. Every other nation ended slavery by peaceful means, America got warmongering, fascist, totalitarian Lincoln. We provoked the Spanish-American War, the Mexican War, and we wanted both World Wars (WWII was justified IMO, but our President still wanted it, and did everything in his power to make Japan attack us). And then we created the excuses to attack Afghanistan, Iraq (Twice), Vietnam, exc.
After 9/11, the American people FREAKED. Of course, panic mode is understandable, calling for the immediate invasion of a foreign power that had little to do with it is not. Yet the war went virtually unquestioned, even initially by Ron Paul himself (Kudos to Barbara Lee here, but even in that case it was only skepticism that the war would be handled correctly, not that the war should not have been fought.) There was NO anti-war movement, for awhile.
The Patriot Act was passed without practically a moment of debate. That ultimately sealed our fate. The American people, or their leaders, chose safety over freedom. And just watch, we will lose both as Franklin predicted.
Yes, we are still, sort of, a free country now. We may even continue to exist in a quasi-freedom state for the next hundred years, for all I know. But 9/11 was the beginning of the end. Not the beginning of the end of perfect freedom, the aforementioned Adams, Lincoln, and FDR absolutely devastated freedom in America during their terms, but I fear that this time we may never return to sanity of any kind again.
The American people have become like sheep. They don't even care about their freedoms anymore as long as government keeps them safe. They don't even question why we have military in 160 doggone countries.
We are the Roman Empire. I just hope I'm dead before I'm proven right, meaning that I hope we do, in fact, delay the inevitable.
Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up. We just had an election and we just pulled out of Iraq. You're allowed to post idiotic and incidentally anti-governmental trash on US-based websites. Shut up.
Our "Election" was a joke. The only legitimate alternatives were the third party candidates that nobody knew about (Best of wishes to all of them, even the left-wing ones
). While they disagreed on fiscal issues, all of them save perhaps Virgil Goode wanted more liberty in the social sphere, and all of them wanted a better foreign policy. And yet over 98% of voters blindly voted for one of the two that differed from each other even less than Ron Paul differs from his son.
There weren't too options, there was one, and his name was "Hawk" or perhaps "Peeping Tom." Neither was a friend to any kind of liberty.
And until I am forced not to do so, I will continue to use the freedom I still have to speak against the Beast that is the United States government.
