If you are afraid to face the truth that one day there will be no more America, turn off your computer and read the funny papers. This, friends, is not to be facetious. It’s in the cards, and you may have been shuffling the deck without looking down to see what comes up.

How can I be so arrogant as to state that this great, beautiful nation is going to disappear from the face of the earth and be replaced by, God only knows what?  Well, let me begin at the beginning, then you shoot down the logic of my findings, if you can.

In explaining how governments work (or rather, deteriorate) two factors, often working together, are extremely important to understand.

One, if a nation, such as America, falls under the control of power-mad individuals, history proves that it gradually goes from a republic (rule of law) to a democracy (rule by a majority) to an oligarchy (rule by an elite few) to a monarchy (rule by one) to anarchy (no rules at all) to tyranny (chaos).

Two, if, during the process of this transition, a nation becomes an empire, why that does that hurry a nation’s demise? An empire, in the political sense, is a domain ruled by a single authority over which imperial dominion is exercised; or another way to put it: it’s a group of countries under a single authority, such as the Byzantine, Habsburg, Ottoman, British and Roman empires—all of which eventually collapsed. Why collapsed? Because an empire, in essence, characterizes the behavior of any powerful states in the international system, and behavior like that connotes illegitimate governance, threats to international peace, dissolution of sovereignty, and finally an inharmonious, therefore, dangerous influence.

That America, under this administration, is well down the road to empire is there for all those with eyes to see. In fact, with American presence in 159 out of 190 countries, and with 250,000 of our military personnel stationed around the globe, to deny that America is an empire is a case of serious self-delusion. True to fashion, however Vice President Dick Cheney doesn’t see it this way. “If we were a true empire,” he glibly stated, “we would currently preside over a much greater piece of the earth’s surface than we do. That’s not the way we operate.”

Like hell it isn’t, Mr. Vice president. How much of the earth’s surface do you want before you call us as empire?

And now a moment of reflection. If the foregoing information suggests to you that an empire destructs itself because of the gluttonous, power-hungry individuals running the government, you got the message this article is trying to deliver. And if you are also becoming aware that empires rot from inside out, not the other way around, you hit the nail on that one too. Finally, if you are now seeing the relationship between the imperial, power-grabbing agenda that the Bush administration is following--- people killed, our mounting debt, our sagging economy, our porous borders, our overextended military, our deteriorating image in foreign countries---and our hedonistic march to empire, congratulations, you’ve got the whole picture!

In his quite long and informative article titled: Rome’s Dark Night of Tyranny, Steve Bonta writes:  “Much has been made of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, but the real story, which had concluded by the time of Christ, was the decline and fall of the republic (my italics). For the fall of empires is a foregone conclusion; they are always built on a foundation of sand---despotism, militarism, expansionism, and welfare---and soon exhaust themselves, or are dismembered by other powers. But the causes leading to the decline and fall of the republics pose a vexing problem that man has not yet fully fathomed.

I beg to differ with Mr. Bonta only on this last point. Americans are, slowly but surely, fathoming the answer to the impending death of our republic. It is by deception, treachery, imperialism, aggression, and dictatorial “leadership” that America is fast becoming just one more fallen empire in the dust bin of tomorrow’s history.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney are too steeped in delusion and denial to accept the truth that the empire they are building was doomed from the start. But the real tragedy is, that what they also doomed to die is the greatest nation on God’s green earth.

James T. Moore