An Empire Like No Other: The British experience was unique; America will write its own chapters

National Review, Sept 1, 2003 by John Derbyshire

The Founders of this nation believed, in the words of George Washington's First Inaugural, that "Every step by which [the people of the United States] have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency." There is something in our national character that makes us yearn for some assurance, or at least hint, of Divine sanction for our great enterprises-even when, as in the present case, they are already amply justified on grounds of self-interest. It would certainly help reconcile Americans to these necessary imperial expeditions if we could believe that they served some large historical tendency or purpose. Might this be so?

In the epilogue to Farewell the Trumpets, the last volume in her splendid history of the British Empire, Jan Morris speaks of a clarifying moment when, after years of laborious research, she suddenly saw the Empire as part of that grand evolutionary progress described by Teilhard de Chardin- "that infinitely slow and spasmodic movement towards the unity of mankind." Morris continues: "The arrogance of the Empire, its greed and its brutality, was energy gone to waste: but the good in the adventure, the courage, the idealism, the diligence, had contributed their quota of truth towards the universal fulfilment." It may be that we, in our efforts to thwart or contain the threats facing us in this new century, will contribute our own quota of truth to that same fulfilment.