This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I am Gaius. Dermanicus is here.

Hail conscript father. We begin with a lesson in imperialism. In these last days since we spoke,

we're at our favorite wine bar by the Thames, the Centurians, retired from different legios, telling wonderful stories.

We'll tell one later.

Wonderful stories.

We have witnessed the debate over the use of the gunboat, sometimes called the B-2,

by the empire that inherited our talent for using force in

order to impose our will.

That is Rome, and that is the United States of America.

So we begin by observing strangely to us why it is that so many really well-educated

members of the intelligentsia in the 21st century want to divide the world between liberal

and illiberal, as if that somehow washes away the sins of imperialism.

In our time, 91 AD, springtime, now summer,

we accepted the fact that the empire kept it safe.

Now and again, there was an eruption, an emperor here, an emperor there, some vengeance.

But then again, we would stabilize and reestablish our authority for 1,500 years.

And we were an empire and we were proud of it.

So, Germanicus, I come to you, Conscript, Father, with a puzzle.

I read in the Financial Times,

surely the best paper representing liberal democracy in the 21st century.

An essay by a renowned intellectual, Timothy Gart Nash, dividing the world into liberal and

illiberal, talking about elections forthcoming, the EU becoming a power so that there are

...