Empire is just like any other form of government, be it monarchy, other form of dictatorship, or republic. Some of what an empire does is good, some bad. Look at the Roman Republic or the Athenian Republic. Plenty of good things came from both of these republics, but both had their shares of horrible and uncivilized practices (just ask the average gladiator, citizen of Carthage, or Socrates -- whose last words "I drank what!" have been immoralized by comics to this day). The United States has had a pretty darn imperial foreign policy since day one (just ask Canada [which we unsuccessfully invaded], Mexico [we took more than half of their territory], Puerto Rico and the Philippines [who helped us fight the Spanish on promises of independence, and ended up under U.S. domination], Nicaragua, and, most recently, Iraq) and we are supposedly "the arsenal of democracy". And its hipocritical for us to correctly say that the former subjects of the British Empire would prefer their own form of government to one imposed by Great Britain while we are unsuccessfully attempting to impose our form of government on Afghanistan and Iraq even as we speak. My conclusion is simple: government in any form is a barely necessary evil subject to constant and pervasive corruption. Who was it that said power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Call it what you will, all governments, be they elected or otherwise are subject to this principal.
