As Operation Anglosphere points out, the notion of an Anglo Empire — this time an American Empire — is regaining popularity, at least among non-Americans:
”America is the most magnanimous imperial power ever,” declared Dinesh D’Souza in the Christian Science Monitor in 2002. ”Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets,” argued Max Boot in a 2001 article for the Weekly Standard titled ”The Case for American Empire.” In the Wall Street Journal, historian Paul Johnson asserted that the ”answer to terrorism” is ”colonialism.” Columnist Mark Steyn, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, has contended that ”imperialism is the answer.””People are now coming out of the closet on the word ‘empire’,” noted Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. ”The fact is no country has been as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the history of world since the Roman Empire.” Krauthammer’s awe is shared by Harvard human rights scholar Michael Ignatieff, who asked earlier this year in The New York Times Magazine, ”What word but `empire’ describes the awesome thing America is becoming?” While acknowledging that empire may be a ”burden,” Ignatieff maintained that it has become, ”in a place like Iraq, the last hope for democracy and stability alike.”
Jeet Heer’s article also corrects a common misinterpretation of Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”:
Rudyard Kipling’s famous imperialist paean, ”The White Man’s Burden,” often mistakenly linked to England’s rule over India, was specifically written in 1899 to support Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign to extend the American sphere of influence into the Philippines.