Empire abroad . Empire at home?

Hi All,

When I was writing this, I first thought of the following scene :

Now to be fair to Ronald  Reagn  he later became governor of California - a state bigger than some countries- and also had one other attempt at running for president during the primaries of 1976. So he did gain political experience from being a Hollywood actor to being  President of the United States. 

It is also true that while there have been plenty of rich patrician Presidents and Presidents born in log cabins , you can at least note that they came into politics with a solid idea of what they wanted to do and had a grasp of politics i.e. how to campaign, debate , speak etc. 

Today by contrast it feels that America or more specifically the republic's institutions are nothing but for an oligarchy at the top. This includes the Clintons and the Bushes , the Kennedy dynasty and maybe even the Trumps & Obamas should another member of either family choose to run.

 Britain might have a hereditary peerage , but the days of Prime Ministers coming from either Whig or Tory landed gentry are long gone. True the last hereditary peer to become prime minister was in 1963, but he was forced to abdicate his Earldom to do so. By contrast America is a Republic without an aristocratic hereditary principle , yet it seemingly has an informal oligarchy to   aristocracy.

Looking at the outside I would say to my American friends if you value your republican institutions as mandated by your constitution, then think again before you anoint another oligarch to be a democratic or republican candidate. If you do not and the system keeps producing candidates on both sides with familiar family names then your republic will wither and die. It will become another Rome. Incidentally I would include Oprah here, but that's the subject for another post.

In some ways America already is another Rome in so much as there is an official Republic at home and abroad an Empire, though like Romans, most Americans don't see it that way. However look at the vast array of military bases and commitment America has to umpteen allies around the planet. Not even the British Empire at its greatest extent had such commitments and indeed Britain often opted for compromise and peace , rather than war (for example the Venezuelan boundary dispute and America in 1898).

Look also at the  philosophy of neo conservatism, popular in both Democratic and Republican circles,  which has at its core the idea that by spreading American ideas throughout the globe (by force if necessary) especially democracy then the world will be a better place, coupled with a default hostility to Russia and China. This is no different to Rome's view of the external barbarians. And in any case the empire abroad, quickly became an Empire at home. 

Even more interesting was that the first Emperor of Rome, Augustus ,  insisted that Roman was still a Republic that he had restored and protected; he even kept the trappings of the republic, such as the Senate. We know differently and I hope we never see America become an Empire a broad and an Empire at home.