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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us July 1, 2005 Commentary The rise and fall of the American Empire (July 4, 2105) — Today marks the birthday of one of the world’s past empires, the American Empire. Robert Asghar The United States of America still exists, of course — minus the Southern states, who were kicked out in 2012 by then-President Howard Dean — and it remains a proud nation populated by a proud people. But its impact on the world for the bulk of the past century has had far more to do with the infectious nature of its ideas than any new accomplishments over that span. Those ideas are centered on freedom, the word that became a mantra for George W. Bush, one of the last great presidents of America’s era of empire. This freedom gave individuals the incentive to break the shackles of community norms, tribal customs or family expectations, in pursuit of the opportunity to shape one’s own destiny. America indeed was the Land of the Free. In earlier days, freedom for its citizenry meant the freedom to sacrifice in a quest for lofty goals. This was the freedom to defiantly take on nature and its laws, as rugged settlers made sacrifices previously unknown to humankind as they rolled toward new frontiers. Freedom to boldly confront the laws of nature eventually became an expectation that Americans were entitled to be free from those laws. Once Americans ran out of compelling frontiers that brought out the best in them, ideas such as industriousness and planning for the future carried little weight. Personal debt reached $2 trillion by 2003. Americans believed that wars could be fought worldwide without new taxes, military drafts or other unpleasantness. Politicians of both major parties fell over themselves to declare themselves the more competent in providing a bread-and-circus national diet. Third World citizenries with greater drive and smaller salary needs began to rise. In a four-decade span ending in 2005, the percentage of foreign students earning Ph.D.s in America’s engineering schools doubled to nearly 40 percent of the total count — not because American students were squeezed out, but because they yielded the opportunity to foreigners who, in the American sports parlance of the time, “just wanted it more.” Sensing they were at a crossroads, Americans responded characteristically: They polled and re-polled themselves to find a solution. Their solution in 2016 was to hand the presidency to Howard Schultz, previously the CEO of the Starbucks coffeehouse chain. Using the same entrepreneurialism that enabled him to put a Starbucks on every corner and inside every supermarket, bank and competing coffeehouse, President Schulz began the systematic franchising of America’s most distinct values. The franchising of freedom was actually well under way. America’s entertainment industry had spread various narratives about the glory of the individual. This franchising of the American individual gospel had been less unwelcome and more eagerly greeted than similar efforts by major religions to proselytize new cultures. Schultz was rabid in taking this to the next level, sweeping every plain of the earth. Although immigration visas had been curtailed following a terrorist attack in 2001, Schulz allowed freer access to American shores. His reasoning: Even brief exposure to America had an infectious effect. The “America bug” would be carried by visitors back to other lands, which would be powerless to resist the infection. Some citizens insisted America was choosing unwisely at its crossroads, selling off its playbook rather than employing it for new victories. Yet many acknowledged that the nation could not retrieve that pioneer spirit and the willingness to use freedom as a means to sacrifice for future gains. As such, the Schultz approach could let the empire win its most enduring, most irreversible victory. “Americanism is an overpowering idea,” Schultz said in his second inaugural address. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The incentive to shape destiny rather than to meekly yield to its machinations. Thanks to our efforts, today all countries are American.” In that manner, many experts consider America to be like the seminal Greek empire, rather than various pedestrian empires that came and went without reshaping the human psyche and culture in as dramatic a fashion. Yet the question lingers: Could the American empire have sustained itself for a few more centuries? Could it have found new ways to make better use of its own great ideas than those to whom it transplanted those ideas? DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Online Pharmacy Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations Hammocks Water Filter Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams