NIALL FERGUSON AND THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
Another reason I feel I can let this go is that my need to fight the madness is somewhat reduced, thanks to Niall Ferguson. This fine British historian's new book, Colossus, takes on the issue of American "empire" in a pretty favorable light, with huge historical depth. It makes sense, it has integrity and wisdom...

Reading Ferguson's book was, for me, like the moment when a drowning man's feet find solid ground beneath him. This blog was like the drowning man thrashing, trying to keep his head above the waters of madness that threatened to engulf him. Now that my feet have found a place to stand, the thrashing can stop.

We have the misfortune to live in an age which, despite (or perhaps even-- who knows?-- because of!) unprecedented material prosperity and freedom in the world, the state of discourse, of opinion, of academia, is peculiarly perverse and deranged. A certain point that Ferguson makes is useful as a litmus test: he declares decolonization a "failure." More often than not, after the colonialists left, law unraveled, there was dictatorship, despotism, destitution, famines and civil wars and so on. In a healthy climate of discourse, Ferguson's point, given its overwhelming factual basis, would be broadly accepted, almost a truism. Instead, only a small "right-wing" fringe can bring themselves to say it-- indeed, Ferguson is almost the only one.

Yet perhaps what I am even more grateful to Ferguson for is that he convincingly denies American exceptionalism. America is an empire like so many others before it, he seems to say, certain, like all empires, having its own unique, particular characteristics, but also much in common. This was reassuring somehow; at any rate, it makes you feel less alone.

The war in Iraq struck me like a revelation, the way many young people at the time of the French Revolution were fired up and inspired. I was passionate about defending and extending the Iraq model. Now it seems just another chapter in history. And we are not the first to suffer a prevalent madness. Voltaire and his fellow philosophes found themselves in a similar condition.