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In the next decade or two will our children be reading "The Rise And Fall Of The American Empire"?

Please read the article before answering. http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2008/04/tomgram-howard.html .

Public Comments

1. I think so! It's hard to imagine what the next 10-20 years will be like for us, but it's clear there will be huge changes in our foreign policy. One of the biggest challenges for the next president is to work on restoring our prestige in the world and our relationships with our allies--or the countries that used to be our allies. We are in for at least a nasty recession, and it could be worse than that. Regardless of political predisposition, it should be clear to just about anyone that our current path is unsustainable. We can give up in Iraq now or we can spend several trillion more dollars and several thousand more lives and -then- give up. Howard Zinn, BTW, is one of my heroes. His approach to American History is almost unique because he doesn't feel the obligation to portray the US as the 'Good Guy' in every conflict. It's kind of scary, in a way, that more historians, even relatively good ones, can't see American history without the gratuitous overlay of false patriotism.
2. Interesting article. Personally, I had an experience with this that deserves to be shared. I have a friend who was a college dean, whose politics seemed kind of conservative and mainstream, but whose human ideals were pretty lofty. I spent years explaining to him I thought America is a an undeclared empire. He denied it for years. Then after 9/11, his tune changed radically: he stated that the US was indeed the largest empire in the world, and that he had no trouble with that... and that as The Main Superpower, we deserved to dictate to the rest of the world to achieve economic stability for us, the US. He made this transition seamlessly, without noticing that the very thing he denied for thirty years that I have known him he suddenly embraced as incontrovertible truth. Suddenly, as far as he was concerned, we had been an empire since WWII and that was fine with him. He remains my friend, but his political view underscores the schizophrenia of American intellectuals about this subject. You are damned if you say we are an empire, and damned if you declare we are not the main superpower in the world. The sad news is that the Fall of the empire has already occurred... though I suppose that's good news to those who don't want to be dictated to. Come to think of it, considering what little good the US as world Empire has done for me, let it continue to fall. I owe no allegience to that country. My country was the decent America that got erased by the current dictatorship.
3. No, they'll be reading, "Go Out On a Limb, That's Where the Fruit Is".
4. Do American children read now?