Hey guys, I want to do something a little different today with the war in Iran and

Donald Trump's successful military actions in places like Venezuela, discussions on acquiring

places like Greenland.

There are now conservative commentators coming out and

asking the question, should America be an empire? Is it good to be an empire? Should we be defending

the idea of America as an empire? And I find that very interesting because that's something I've

discussed many times on this channel. These are

conversations that we've had in depth from different angles. The fact that this is now something

that people are not just acknowledging, but actually advocating for is very interesting. We've been

very hesitant to recognize America as an empire up to this point. People tend to think of empires as places that restrict freedom,

that control other areas that force themselves onto other civilizations or peoples and seeing

as the United States is founded on this idea of breaking away from another empire, we've kind of

told ourselves that our military actions are about liberating people,

bringing freedom to them. So it's kind of hard to balance this idea of empire. But more and more

conservative commentators, I think largely in efforts to kind of support where Trump is going,

are saying, okay, well, maybe it's okay that we acknowledge that America is an empire now,

and here's why that's good.

And I want to make it clear that I'm responding to people like John Doyle, who's a great guy,

a colleague of mine. And I'm responding because I want to have this conversation.

This is not me dunking on any of those people making these points, certainly not John.

He brought up many good points in his

recent episode on this question. And so I just wanted to give my thoughts, since this is something

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