Salvē!
This episode of Londinium Chronicles was broadcast live yesterday on YouTube, X, and here on Substack.
Join us this Sunday at 6PM EST for another live broadcast.
Hail, conscript fathers. We begin with a lesson in imperialism.
We have witnessed the debate over the use of a gunboat (sometimes called the B-2) by the Empire that inherited our talent for using force in order to impose our will. That is Rome, and that is the United States of America.
So we begin by observing why it is that so many really well-educated members of the intelligentsia in the 21st century want to divide the world between “liberal” and “illiberal,” as if that somehow washes away the sins of imperialism.
In our time, 91 A.D., we accepted the fact that the Empire kept its peace. Now and again there was an eruption—an emperor here, an emperor there, some vengeance—but then again, we would stabilize and reestablish our authority for 1500 years. And we were an empire, and we were proud of it.
A puzzle I read in the Financial Times (surely the best paper representing liberal democracy in the 21st century), an essay by a renowned intellectual, Timothy Garton Ash, dividing the world into “liberal” and “illiberal,” talking about elections coming at us, becoming a power so that there are three powers: the United States, the EU, and the Eurasian illiberal.
I thought, as I listened to him, how complicated it gets for him. In our time, we are the Empire and we impose our will with force. The B-2, for example, was a one-off demonstration of gunboat diplomacy, something the British would recognize easily. You send a gunboat in, you show that there will be no mercy. And suddenly the rebel, the revolutionary, the cruel nature of a local warlord becomes intimidated and everybody just hurts them. And we go on as an empire.
That looks to be a possible outcome of Iran.
The United States expressed its power with a gunboat. It used it once. It could have followed up, but it chose not to. And now we see the lessons are being taken around the world. Good heavens, what have they got? We can't stop it.
Why is it the 21st century liberal thinkers want to avoid being an empire? What is it about what we've established that makes them hesitate?
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