X @Balaji

America absolutely did build an empire. I don’t mean this in a negative way; it was by many measures the greatest empire of all time.And global military dominance is what allowed it to issue the reserve currency, and spread the political, technological, and economic ideas you mention.See map below. This is not the posture of a republic that just wanted to sit meekly behind its borders, as today’s American right often claims.Nor is it really a democracy, as the American left would have it. I mean, did the ci ...