Stop Me Before I Vote Again

"Of course, the average American is not concerned with the complexities of global finance.But as I talk to ordinary Americans, and I visit the United States once or twice a year, I sense their anxiety about the state of the economy. The irony, they have said to me, is that the middle class felt little benefit from economic growth when the official indicators were pointing upward, but once the downturn started, it hit them immediately, and it hit them hard."

That's Gorby layin' it out for our next prez in an op-ed at the ITH. The man who brought down the socialist camp right on the heads of all its overtasked, undercompensated little campers. His advice to up our economy? Cut the military budget. Lots of our problems can be solved, according to ex-Leninist Gorbachev, if we just turn away from the Bush big stick and bigger swagger approach to global problems. "The size of America's defense budget and the militarization of its foreign policy..." is a real deep troublemaker, not only for all our fellow earthlings, but for ourselves as well -- or at least those not raised by the system into Larry Summers' stateless elite.

Not bad advice, now is it? After all, when is it not a good time to nix empire, American style?

But don't he then fall right on his face: "the next president will have to decide... whether America wants to be an empire or a democracy."

Okay, so his empire was not compatible with "democracy" -- at least as we know it -- but is our empire?

Unlike the empire Uncle Joe built, I think our own brand sprang very easily and quite nicely right out of our special kinda spreadeagle settler state rendition of a democracy. So you might take himself's solemn advice to the next commandante of the world's sole hyperpower with a snicker or two.

"Global dominance or international cooperation: choose. This is an either-or proposition: The two things don't mix, like oil and water."

Gorby is, maybe, half right. Like oil and water, democracy at home and empire abroad "don't mix" -- or at least not well, or for long. No good comes of trying to mix 'em, but they can lay almost indefinitely, the ugly one settin' on top of the shiny hill one -- sorta like a Sioux chief's war bonnet.

Didn't such Rushmorean heroes as TR and FDR prove that, in times long long past?