If unwinding the empire is PJB's purported goal, then replacing it with more despotism is not unwinding it. The intended degree of domestic surveillance is too large a price to pay to meet the requirements of either PJB's religion or his patriotism. As a journalist, he too often believes too readily the official story. His book on Churchill should have dispelled those old illusions. As soon as Europeans set foot on this continent, they stole the land, murdered the Indians, enslaved the Africans. This is the heritage of the Founders, this is the legacy of the capitalists. Vociferous capitalism creates empires. It's a mixed economy that works best for most people. Fascism only works best for Fascists & cronies & it's always totalitarian. This regime & its constitution can no longer protect the individual even from itself. Rather than anarchy being the first stage of nature, it's really the last stage of enlightened politics.

Caroline is certainly correct about America. If Americans continue to further lose their Bill of Rights, we'll not be in a position to protect any other country's rights including Israel's. What began under Wilson, FDR & Reagan has now found its logical progression in Obama. What was once Sheldon Wollin's "inverted totalitarianism" has now turned extroverted & triumphalist. America's regime has become a full blown Fascistic govt., corrupted at its bureaucratic core & overtly totalitarian in its future prospects. The two major parties are only shills for the regime & offer virtually no way out of the mess in which we find ourselves & in which they created. It's also ironic that it's exactly 100 yrs. since the creation of the FED to bring us to our present miserable condition. We're no longer "the last, best hope of mankind."

Should innocent people be executed? Some have been (Todd Willingham), others have been reprieved & even exonerated. Should Dzokhar Tsarnaev be executed? New info. came out yesterday (the Corbett Report), that the CIA along with the FBI were the perpetrators of this false flag & the Tsarnaev brothers were set up & framed. Note how the MSM & the govt. collude in the obfuscation of cases like Aurora, Newtown & now Boston. Of course, the same folks who want the death penalty also hold up our justice system as a paragon & example for "liberal democracies" everywhere. Anyone paying attention realizes that seldom does our system result in justice & is often found completely dysfunctional for the average American. It's as corrupt or more corrupt as any of our so called democratic institutions. When politicians, banksters & corporations are committing their crimes with impunity, justice has become like anything else for sale. If you get caught up in the justice system, you'd better have lots of dough. Instead of a justice system, we merely have a prison system---the largest in the world. Only jury nullification can help alleviate our totalitarian situation until we obtain a new constitution that creates definitively a rule of law & not of men.

The trouble with Ferguson (as historian) is that his view of history always returns toward the glorious days of the British Empire, it's current reemergence (the NWO of one world government) & it's ultimate apotheosis when the UK will get a major chunk of the rest of the world's spoils. Liberals love his work for the view it gives themselves of their sacrosanct but, nevertheless, rigged democracy & their concomitant white man's burden. Of course, he's anti-homosexual, wasn't Kipling?

Sorry, Caroline, even though we dislike Obama even more than Israelis, Israel's land grabs & its continuing injustices against the Pals disqualify it from Americans wanting to have "their backs" for much longer. Unlike diamonds, military alliances aren't "forever," no matter how beneficial to each other they were at one time. The founders of Israel have had over 65 yrs. to make peace with the Pals & it looks now as if Is. was never capable of statehood in the modern world. What the UN did in 1948, the UN could undo in 2013. With Bibi & Iran, we've never believed that things are as imminently bad as he's been claiming since 1992. Your agitprop is also failing here to resonate.

Pat has offered the solution in other places. Either we dismantle our empire or it will definitely be dismantled by others not to our liking. We can't any longer afford to maintain it, even if we wanted to, which most Americans don't. The West against the Rest hasn't worked out the way FDR, TR or Wilson imagined it.

Yes, O has killed more children than Lanza but the Judge failed to mention that W killed more children than both. It would be a definite plus for the rule of law, if we prosecuted our war criminals & our banksters instead of merely relying on "serious firepower" to bring down our tyrants after their tyranny is firmly ensconced in the system. On the matter of drones, does the Judge think that the Police State will allow law abiding (whatever that now means) citizens to have surface to air missiles to bring them down from above our heads?

Oil, gold & copper have been discovered recently in the North. That's why France is interested & America is very interested. China wants stability throughout the continent to pursue their own considerable interests. Russia tried to get it's foot into Libya but were rebuffed by the West. They can have Syria & Iran if they want them so much. We get Africa & Asia. So we think.

Yes. It's the entire human being that's fallen according to Catholicism. The intellect is subservient to our wills, it can only inform our wills or misinform them (what we call "rationalization"). We see this most emphatically & most consistently in the operative ethic that the ends justify the means: They never do.

We feel God's absence most acutely during & in the aftermath of tragedies both natural & man made, including the tragic death of the young & innocent. This apparent absence also serves us in realizing how infinitely preferable God is to everything else (Merton).