Tuesday, February 06, 2018

The sorrows of empire


Chalmers Ashby Johnson (August 6, 1931 – November 20, 2010) was an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967 to 1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972. He was also president and co-founder with Steven Clemons of the Japan Policy Research Institute (now based at the University of San Francisco), an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia.

He wrote numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of American Empire: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. A former cold warrior, his fears for the US changed:

    "A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship."

1 comment:

Brother Jonah said...

Well, they DID say they would give the Conqu... ummm... Liberated, yea,that's the ticket... the same rights and justice as U.S. citizens...

They stopped giving citizenship in a 12 year blast to offshore Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Arizona, New Mexico and eventually bought some of the Virgin Islands from Britain and the others, like Panama, Guatemala, Nicar... oh, all of MesoAmerica and of course the Pacific nations. I know I'm not counting all of them, but the conq.. Liberated ones pay tribute to the empire in the way of tariffs, opening their markets to U.S. goods and an obligation to support every embargo the Empire designates. In other news, the stock market is about to bleed money.