The New Republic

Stupid little man.

- WandreyCer

January 15, 2012 at 4:45pm

Of course, "the sun never set" on the British Empire because they couldn't be trusted in the dark. Is Santorum choosing the British over Jefferson, Madison, and other founders who did not trust the British precisely because they were imperialists? And if we cannot trust the British imperialists, why would anybody trust Americans if we are imperialists?

- rayward

January 15, 2012 at 4:50pm

I think I've got this Republican historian (Gingrich and Santorum) thing worked out. If you don't want to have to account 8 horrible years Republican policies, you either look far away into the past for inappropriate examples or, like Romney, you blame the President. (Cheney, like Imelda Marcos was to her shoes, is probably the only one of us who looks back with nostaligia.)

- Nusholtz

January 15, 2012 at 5:43pm

Last I checked, socialism runs a pretty extensive welfare state. Apparently the Soviets didn't maintain a particularly large military. Learn something new every day.

- Nari224

January 15, 2012 at 5:55pm

What Wandrey said - stupid little man. He has 3 kids of military age. Anybody want to guess how many are in the military and/or would be sent to fight any of Santorum's splendid little imperial wars? Yes, Rick the military budget is being reduced. Why - because your party doesn't want to pay for it. Every time there's a Democrat in office, we hear about "hollow mlitary" or "gutting defense". When a Republican does it, it's called a peace dividend. Democrat withdraws from a conflict, it's cut and run. Republican does it, it's peace with honor or Mission Accomplished. I'm sure that if elected President, Santorum would receive a warm welcome in places such as India, which perhaps don't share his nostalgia for pax britannica.

- dubyadoubte

January 15, 2012 at 6:07pm

I'm right with you, W. R. Santorum is a dim bulb, indeed. That should be "socialism ran ...", N.

- liberalref

January 15, 2012 at 7:13pm

"I'm not sure what's more depressing: that Santorum is nostalgic for imperialism, or that he thinks such nostalgia is a vote-getter." What's more depressing is that it probably is a vote-getter.

- Dausuul

January 15, 2012 at 8:19pm

Take up the White Man's burden . . . To some extent, the argument that a welfare state and empire can't co-exist holds water, as your own people become less enamored of vast sums of money going to buttress global presence in far-flung lands while people at home deal with the contingent miseries of a capitalism that has grown rich on raw materials and preferential markets in the imperial domain. The difference is that, in contrast to Britain, the Netherlands etc, the United States has not had an empire in the usual sense of the word, and thus Santorum's comments seem ludicrously wide of the target. American domination or at least influence worldwide has been obtained primarily through the integration of other countries and regions into the American economic and commercial model in which we have had the advantage of sheer size. At the same time, however, our influence has not traveled only via corporate activity and strategic superiority but also by way of ideas, culture, education, and entertainment, working in all sorts of odd ways. That was partly the case for the Brits too -- there's a reason why the Indians haven't given up speaking English.

- ironyroad

January 15, 2012 at 8:23pm

That is an excellent comment, irony.

- liberalref

January 15, 2012 at 9:17pm

Thanks libref. By the way, Christopher Hitchens wrote a very intelligent book on this theme around 18-20 years ago. The new edition re-issued in 2004 is called Blood, Class, and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship (the original title has a slightly more satirical edge: Blood, Class, and Nostalgia). But it's a very entertaining read, in either version.

- ironyroad

January 15, 2012 at 10:49pm

I'm surprised he didn't say the British lost their Empire when British boys were allowed to wear condoms whilst having sex with British girls. More seriously, Chalmers Johnson in his trilogy on the American Empire makes the point that the British -- after seeing what evils were required to maintain control of other lands against unwilling populations -- decided that they could either have their empire or their democracy but they could not have both. It is to all our good fortune, says Chalmers, that the British chose democracy.

- TedFrier

January 16, 2012 at 8:44am

sorry Irony, I disagree, the US had an empire. It might not have been akin to the British but it was more like the Portuguese. Under TR we acquired the Philippines and Panama and later viciously put down an uprising, after WW1 we also acquired a huge chunk of the Pacific and even today we still have Guam, Saipan, American Somoa, with the FSM being utterly dependent on us. We have also periodically interfered with most Caribbean states. And certainly Bush acted the imperialist in Iraq thinking he could remake them into Texans (the white ones) The Republicans have a huge imperialist streak because they think that only they know what is best for everyone and that only they should rule.

- blackton

January 16, 2012 at 10:46am

That is one of the few books by Christopher Hitchens that I have not read, irony. I have meant to, but I have never gotten around to it.

- liberalref

January 16, 2012 at 11:11am

I understand your argument, blackie, but I think that some important distinctions can still be made. Our time in most of these places was so brief when contrasted with the centuries of Spanish, British or whoever's rule, and the status of whatever territories we did hold was often the subject of somewhat evasive definition here in the U.S. -- in contrast to the European nations or Japan we did not want to assert empire too loudly as a primary goal of foreign policy. That said, it's true that the TR-John Hay camp at the turn of the century was more openly in favor of taking over the stewardship of the globe from Britain, and it's often quite surprising how wide the support for that position was. For example, many African-Americans -- who generally were pro-Republican at that time -- found good things to say about American influence abroad, although they saw the South-dominated U.S. military as unlikely to advance modern democratic ideas. But the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who knew Hay, wrote an elegy for him that positively drips expansionist sentiment. Anyhow, I agree that one can legitimately use "empire" in a loose sense (for example the Soviet empire 1945-1990) but I often find that it's deployed more polemically than for clarity in discussion -- the are people who are simply convinced beyond any argument that the U.S. is an imperialist nation and will not brook the slightest nuance in the service of historical accuracy.

- ironyroad

January 16, 2012 at 1:50pm

The blackton-irony debate is of a very high quality. Kudos to you both. It isn't very often that the comment section rises to the level of the general high quality of the articles and blog posts by TNR staffers and other contributors, but here we have a shining example of when it does. Your last paragraph is dead on, irony, and it perfectly captures the mindset of far left academics like the late Howard Zinn and the ever-with-us Noam Chomsky.

- liberalref

January 16, 2012 at 2:28pm

Thanks libref - another day, another new thing. Today I learnt that socialism is a purely historical phenomenon and thus should be referred to in the past tense. I guess I also missed China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and Laos renouncing their prior publically stated positions regarding their form of government. So a twofer!

- Nari224

January 16, 2012 at 4:47pm

You're kidding, right? China has been hell-bent on the capitalist road for more than thirty years now. The Communist Party is communist in name only. It has gone from a party based on ideology to a party based on nepotism. And North Korea! There you go, a real socialist welfare state, that one. The coddled North Koreans were privileged to eat insects and tree bark during the horrible famine that occurred in the mid-1990s. Vietnam, like China, and only a bit later, has been heading down the capitalist road. Their doi moi reforms date to 1986, I believe. You really pay attention to world events, don't you, N.? every so often, I will come across a fatuous conservative who talks about "Communist" China. It seems you have similar delusions, too.

- liberalref

January 16, 2012 at 5:46pm

Thanks lib. You really don't understand why people rip into you on a regular basis do you?

- Nari224

January 17, 2012 at 9:32am

Of course I do. Because I rip into them. The level of fatuousness out here is stunning.

- liberalref

January 17, 2012 at 9:46am

"Europe proved countries could not maintain a welfare state and a strong military." I dunno, Nazi Germany did a pretty good job of it until it found itself at war with the remainder of the civilized world and lost. So did the USSR, for most of the 70 years of its existence. If you steal other people's property, kill a bunch of them and keep the rest terrorized or repressed, you can maintain a nice welfare state for your priviliged citizens and a strong military to keep it that way.

- wildboy

January 17, 2012 at 12:31pm

I think Great Britain was well on the road to bankruptcy before it became a welfare state. It costs a lot of money to operate the biggest navy in the world, a distinction Britain held from the Napoleonic era to the start of World War II. It costs a lot of money to defend a empire, too. You either pay a lot of taxes or borrow a lot of money or both if you want to have an empire and a big navy. I trust this is what Mr. Santorum has in mind for the United States.

- brokensq

January 17, 2012 at 4:19pm

Ah - you must be the other person who posts under libref's account as I'm sure I was reading libref complaining a number of times about being told to "shut up". Yet here you are proudly stating that you "rip into them" (other posters). However, getting back on topic: It appears that you are confusing socialism, which was in the OP and what I commented on, with communism which is neither and nor is it interchangeable with socialism. Even Wikipedia mentions it as a "common mistake". Perhaps if one is going to make such elementary mistakes avoiding initially simply snide but quickly degenerating into sanctimonious (with some pejoratives thrown in for good measure) behaviour may be in order? Better to be thought a fool etc.

- Nari224

January 17, 2012 at 8:30pm