Is America Exceptional?--Part 4 The Benign Empire

I have heard, fairly consistently, over the past 40 years that America's best days were behind it, and that was probably a good thing because we were suffering from Imperial overstretch that seemed to doom other major empires of history. Of course, that can be a matter of perspective (i.e. one man’s imperial aggressor is another man’s champion liberator).

Some of the major proponents of this theory ironically have always been the greatest benefactors of our international largess. European powers were bristling under the influence of our "authoritarian hegemony" 40 years ago, and were particularly vocal about the United States' "Imperial instincts" in recent years via the rantings of France's Chirac and Germany's Schroeder. The powers that move the European Continent have been continually frustrated by the, at times, overwhelming impact of the U.S. footprint in military/political/economic terms. In many instances over the past decade, they have worked at cross purposes with the U.S. in the pursuit of creating a "multi-polar" world order to restrain the apparent omnipotent hegemon.