Tucker Carlson made a point in his monologue preceding his conversation with Meagan Kelly that with the American orchestrated Venezuela coup we are now officially an “Empire.” Tucker complimented Trump for being honest about that given Trump’s statement about seizing the oil.
My only beef here with Carlson is that he’s a little late to the party in announcing that the US is now an Empire. The US has been an Empire since 1865 with Lincoln’s victory over the South. That War changed these united States into THE United States and re-created America as Empire. So, the first turn to Empire in our history was internal. We went from being a Republic to being an Empire. The truth of that was seen in the Empirical Reconstruction brought upon the South and its Institutions. The South were the first people dragged into the Humanist Yankee Empire and forced to conform to the ways of the Empire. What the Constitution created as a “Nation of Nations,” was now transformed, via the work of Lincoln, into a unitarian Nation State.
However, our role as Empire did not stop with the Civil War and Reconstruction. Very shortly thereafter our Empire broke outside the bonds of territorial and continental USA. In 1898 we seized Cuba from the Spaniards. In that settlement we also took the Philippines but they objected and so between 1899-1902 we brought war to those islands before they acquiesced to US Empire.
From there, with the two World Wars the US made was to expand Empire. Now, the kind of Empire that was being built via WW I and WW II was not your typical Empire of land seizure and overt control but we were an Empire every bit as the Brits had been before they lost their Empire in WW II. The Empire we built in the first half of the 20th century was an Economic Empire. This is especially seen for folks who know anything about the Bretton Woods agreement which tied the world’s economy to the US Dollar. Americans like to think of how noble the US was in “freeing Europe,” during those conflicts but lives lost in battle is the cost paid for building Empire and Economically, after part II of the World War finished in 1945 we were the world’s Emperor along with the Soviet Union. And many wonder if the Soviet Union only existed at our behest in order to only give the appearance that we were being challenged so that the citizenry here and abroad in the “Free West,” would be frightened into accepting the US as Empire. There are more than a few who will argue that US and Soviet contretemps was all part of the game to manage the world.
Returning to the theme, Carlson’s observation that we are now explicitly an Empire comes about 160 years too late. Carlson may well argue that the mask has finally come off with Trump’s seizure of Venezuela and with Trump’s intimidating Greenland but for those with eyes to see that the US is Empire is very very old news.
Now, one of the perks of being Empire is that the Empire makes the peace. This is seen in history with the Pax Romana and the Pax Britannica. When both Rome and later Brittain stood astride the world each made the Peace. Sometimes that peace was made by sending troops across their far flung Empire to force peace and sometimes that peace was made by dictating the terms in any regional squabble. Empires become the World’s Sheriff, or as it is said today, “The Global Cop.” And that is what we are seeing with the Trump administration. Trump boasts about how many wars he has settled. That is what Empires do. You can bet the farm that the Empire is giving incentives that only Empires can give in order for these wars to be settled.
Of course Empires always fall. Rome did. Britain did. The Ottoman Empire did. The Austro-Hungarian Empire did. What is interesting is that when Empire’s fall it is often because they become over-extended and can’t meet all their responsibilities. Eventually, some aspiring Patriot who doesn’t want to live under Empire notices the weakness, rallies his people, and attacks the Empire. Before that though is the matter of the weakness that sets in. Often that weakness comes as a crisis of confidence on the part of the Empire. Rome’s unwillingness and inability to repulse a comparative handful of Goths is one example. The USSR’s inability to put down the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan is another. This almost happened to America’s Empire under the Carter administration in the late 1970s as a handful of students in Teheran pushed the US Empire to the brink.
Another thing that happens with the fall of Empires is a complete loss of the faith that built the Empire. Now, plenty of people during the existence of Empire see through the faith charade that keeps the Empire afloat. However, once Empire’s fall, they fall because there are no longer enough true believers in the old gods. We are seeing that happen now in the American Empire. Even as Trump tries to rebuild the American Empire there are plenty of people who see that the faith in the God of Liberalism can’t be sustained by the adopting and tolerating of all the competing faith systems that must be adopted and tolerated if a Liberalism turned multiculturalism is to work in keeping the American Empire stitched together.
Another thing that should be noted in this overview is something that Carlson brought out, and that is Empires die when there is no longer any core people left who built the Empire. Carlson used the example of modern London where one must be diligent in seeking to find a Brit in London. Carlson then pivoted to the next obvious example of the US that has been reduced from 88% white in 1970 to 63% white in 2025. Many of our large cities find the numbers even more drastically skewed. Empires cannot last if those who built the Empire do not last.
So … the mask is off and we are officially Empire. This means more wars, which means more of your sons – and in this egalitarian age; daughters – die in order to keep the Empire being the Empire. It means a increased bureaucratic behemoth. In our age it means an increase of technocratic innovation to keep the Empire functioning as well-oiled as it can. It means a lot of bad things that many of us have been screaming about for a very long time. For Christians, it means an increasing abandonment of our undoubted catholic Christian faith. Empires, are, by definition, polyglot. Polyglot entities require a polyglot faith and Christianity is not a faith that can allow other faiths to co-exist with it. At least Christianity of the purest content can’t.
Benjamin Franklin is reported to have told a woman who asked him, after the Constitutional Convention had done its work in forming a Government, what kind of Government had the Founding Fathers formed and his response to the woman was, “A Republic … if you can keep it.” We lost that Republic long ago and if Tucker is correct we have now moved into the open and unapologetic “Empire phase.”
I’m not going to like it.