I want to do a little thinking about what the world will look like in a post-Imperial America scenario.

Let me start by defining “Imperial.” Iraq and Afghanistan are occupied or protectorates or colonies depending on how you think about it. There’s no clearly defined exit timeline, nor is there a clear and absolute end to these ambitions: Iran certainly has pondered whether they are next, and with good reason.

In addition, there is a more subtle cultural hegemony which revolves around the assumption that certain American values are fundamental markers of progress to be emulated by other countries as hallmarks of increasing civilization.

There are instructive lessons to be learned from the Soviet experience here. The first is that the cultural implications of the transition from being a superpower to merely being an exceptionally dangerous country are most felt outside of one’s borders – one could say that Cuba was hit harder by the failure of the USSR than Russia was. The entire Soviet sphere found new morals and new ideals to replace Sovietization when the USSR collapsed as a model.

This is the first thing I want to draw attention to: the USA’s example as a template civilization is the first casualty of collapse. As the moral framework of American society and governance collapsed, as the population simply accepted that their government tortured and murdered, as they accepted that wars were fought on fabricated evidence, as they accepted that FEMA could utterly fail in New Orleans without rocking the hierarchy to the core, as the War on Drugs ate the Constitution and turned America into a virtual police state for some populations, America lost its once rightly-deserved status as a template to which other countries could aspire.

If you remove the American template as an option because the actuality has fallen so far below the idea, what are the new options? European civilization is too boring to consider a template – its aspirations are domestic in the worst sense, and while everybody is fed, there is little greatness and freedom, which well-exercised and well-defended, is largely a matter of a benign status quo rather than a sacred rite of the civil society. What Europe does well is relative stability at a high standard of living, and a basically benign governmental oversight with occasional paternalistic excesses. Of course, one wonders whether the seeds of fascism are entirely scorched here, and little or nothing counterbalances the power of the European states, much less the European union. The spirit of resistance to government, so much beloved by the Founding Fathers is entirely absent. So for those teeming millions in the slums and villages of the world, while Europe may be a good example of what economic stability looks like, there is little fire in the eyes of those who stare upon Europe. One day I could live in Bonn is not the same as one day I will live in New York City. Europe has much reality, but there is no European dream. That died in WW2 and WW1 – entire generations lost their hopes and their lives in dreams and nightmares.

Is China a model? Perhaps for some of Africa, perhaps if their gleaming spires survive the decline of Wal-Mart with the rest of America. But, in general, few nations aspire to China – partly because Chinese cultural values are products of a unique and distinct history and may not travel well, and partly because the Chinese have it hard in comparison to most places. Although the persistent Maoist violence has not stopped in India or Peru or some other countries, it is far from revolution.

So if the end of Soviet rule brought new ideals to the Soviet sphere, what will change in the world as the amplification of American values reduces? I see four main benefits, and one overwhelming, colossal drawback.

Here are the four benefits:

* A reappraisal of the role of nuclear weapons and massive defense spending globally.

America spends at Cold War levels in what was, for a brief time, an essentially unipolar world. The resulting global tension – watch out for the Big Stick – has contributed to a global atmosphere of military anxiety and doubtless fuels defense spending the world over. It also pushes further and faster into the unknown future of military weapons technology which may have a myriad of unforeseen and unfortunate surprises like the Air Force’s Torture Ray which is something which should simply never have been invented, and cannot now be taken out of the global future. It is a disgusting thing that should never have been funded. A decline in American reach will have corresponding positive effects in many areas.

* A harsh re-examination of capitalism as the fundamental global model of society.

The unipolar capitalism of America, in which there is no official Socialism only a large, interfering government bureaucracy is not a workable model of society at this time. The uninsured Americans who suffer and die needlessly, the people who lose their homes to medical bills, the poor children who wind up in the Army to pay for college and wind up in boxes – all of this is the downside of American-style capitalism. The phenomenal upsides justify the worst excesses of capitalism globally, but the hidden prices paid by the society are largely hidden from aspiring eyes. A curtailment of American reach into the world as an example may well create the space necessary for deep thinking and re-examination of the role of money in modulating who can live and who must die. Perhaps there are other models which will work better. In any case, moderating forces will be applied inside of societies which currently aspire to the American model, perhaps to the benefit of many. I want to make a note here for my Libertarian readers: what you have in mind has not been tried, and American-style Capitalism is a distinct thing with its own rules.

* The global end of the war on drugs.

American puritanism has held back the tide at the cost of millions of shattered lives long enough. People love drugs, the damage caused by enforcement of bad laws on large populations is vastly worst than the damage of drugs overall, and the entire edifice is maintained by the American cultural values which are exported along with American aid, media and culture. The war on drugs is stupid and will likely end with diverse and moderate harm-reduction policies as the central fact of global drug policy. And we will all be better off for this, except those who profit from the current status quo, such as dealers who depend on government price controls to keep their profit margins sky high.

* A shattering re-appraisal of the role of the corporation in public life.

It’s over for corporations as political power holders. Watching the corruption of good government in America by generation of generation of companies looking for unfair advantage or to loot the treasury directly is the best inoculation against letting corporate interests co-opt the natural functions and role of government. Charged with wrecking their playground, America, I suspect that over time, a more regulation-heavy approach to corporations will emerge as a global norm, largely backed by governments that understood the role that corporate greed had in the decline of America as a power. There is something higher on the food chain than the corporation, and it matters.

But, for all these gains, there is one worldwide and overwhelming loss.

* RESPECT FOR INDIVIDUAL HUMAN RIGHTS AS THE BASIS OF SOCIETY

You may laugh now, but for all that America has fallen short of this, for all that even in America it was an ideal and not a reality, by god the rights of man that were articulated by the Founding Fathers have been seen more clearly across the entire world because the biggest kid with the biggest stick said “We Hold These Truths to Be Self Evident, That All Men Are Created Equal” and actually, in many cases, meant it.

There is no substitute for America in this regard. Nowhere else has the laser-like precision of the Founders been focussed on these issues resulting in a people who genuinely feel themselves to be free. I spent 10 years in America and at a deep and fundamental level, I felt the influence of the Framers of the Constitution every single day of my life. America’s potential as the vehicle of freedom globally was unparalleled.

What mockery, then, has the Bush administration made of it? None, I tell you, none at all. What mockery have the people of America made of it? They have trampled the sacred dreams of their forefathers into the dust for one more bite of hamburger.

There is no substitute for America in pioneering the framework of the rights of the individual as the most sacred framework of society. While the reality has fallen pathetically short of the dream and of the potential of the nation, on the global stage, there is no voice for the individual like that of America’s great historic past. The American people have let down the entire planet by their unwillingness to savagely destroy the politicians who have brought their nation’s moral basis to ruin through torture, immortal war and civic bankruptcy.

Americans, we were counting on you, and you failed us. Individually you may point at the masses and say “but what is my vote against theirs” but this was never a matter for deciding by votes, it was a matter of 5% of Americans screaming in the streets bloody havoc until every single political prisoner held without trial was released or tried properly. Guantanamo Bay and the wider extrajudicial imprisonment programs are the moral death of American liberty. They give lie to everything America once stood for.

And, at a global scale, we have no fall back position

Individual human rights was the jewel in the crown of America for the period that America was the most advanced nation on earth in the practice of practical morality. We have no substitute for it, no nation where those same values are better entrenched. I cannot think of a single nation where you may live in peace, carry a firearm to work, offend your neighbors, blaspheme against all religions, drink to excess, smoke marijuana and sleep with whom you choose with impunity.

America was a beacon to the world, and will be a bold memory to the ages, but the current generations of Americans have squandered it. We need it back.

So, Americans: are you willing to fight for the greatness of your nation? Are you willing to sacrifice everything for the ray of light that your country once offered to this dark planet? Are you willing to make the dream real again?

I thought not. Obama is not enough. McCain is not even a beginning. It is about you – each and every single one of you, as individuals – reading the Bill of Rights and ignoring any law which is not in conformity with it. It is about you, each and every one of you, refusing to convict people in jury trials when the law is unjust. It is about you investigating and prosecuting every single instance of electoral fraud. It is about you fighting, like hell, for all of us.

That is the standard and the bar for America to regain its moral greatness. If it cannot, I fear for the future of the individual in the world. While I can do without the poisonous global miasma sent forth by the four malign influences I mentioned first, individual human rights as the foundations of society is something we cannot live without globally.

America, I call you to your fundamental values. Are you dead in the grave, or will you rise to the strong grip of the world’s need for its bastion of liberty? The future may yet be in your hands.

If America fails, we are going to need an international confederation of individuals who understand the role of individual human rights as the foundation of a just society. For reasons that I will go into another day, the conventional Libertarian framework misses the mark, while getting much of the practical essence correct. An Internationale for Freedom, a conspiracy of hope, may be required to keep the flame alive until it can be re-embodied by a future generation in another Free State.

But first, for god’s sake, Americans – burn the goddamned white house down if they put another liar in it, please.