> Czuch: I guess it depends somewhat on how you define 'imperialism'....

Perhaps what I was trying to get at in my post is that empires have acted in a similar ways through history. The only big difference now is that empires no longer want to be called empires. We want to justify our actions based on some nobler, greater ideals.

Since the creation of the United Nations the way empires behave has changed. In the past if the British or the French or other western empires wanted to do something, they did and the consequences both at home and abroad were not scrutinized so much in the communications media.

Today we want oil, minerals, food and all the other commodities we need. Our governments and private corporations go out and get them the old fashioned way, through war and imperialist methods. However, the voting public wants good justifications for those actions.

As the voting public we want to go to war based on some high ideal and not just securing the supply of commodities. Consider the following two statements:

"We are going to war to protect our country from terrorism and from an evil dictator that threatens us with weapons of mass destruction. The protection of our democracy and our way of life depend in taking decisive action."

"We are going to war because there happens to be a dictator that is hostile to us and he controls the third largest oil reserves in the world. Several large, powerful oil monopolies will make billions while we control the supply and distribution of oil in the world."

The voting public would refuse to go war if the justification is imperialism, but the voting public will go to war if they feel their freedom and democracy threatened.

Our politicians have become pragmatic and cynical. That goes for both left and right wing parties. Conservatives, liberals, democrats, republicans, etc., they all now stand for the same thing, which is to convince the public that their actions are right no matter what.

We as the voting public have given them that power. I think the big problem now is that we do not want to be called imperialists because since WW II empires are "bad". There was a time when people were proud to be part of big empires. If we go back 100 years, many western nations saw imperialism as more desirable than democracy. That ideological change came about with WW II.