On Sat, 16 Nov 2002, Hitchens was quoted writing in Grand Street in 1985:
>The contemporary United States expresses the greatest of all paradoxes.
>It is at one and the same time a democracy -- at any rate a pluralist
>open society -- and an empire. No other country has ever been, or had,
>both things at once. Or not for long.
Hitch is not the only one who's said this. But he ought to know better than most people it isn't true. Not only was Britain a democracy when it was an empire, but democracy played a big role in sending forth its last great imperial surge. It's what brought Disraeli to power in the 1870s. And that was quite a long time before it stopped. France and Holland were also republics and empires simultaneously. Not to mention Rome :o)
It's funny how many time you can hear something like this before you suddenly realize it's just flatly wrong. Like Thomas Friedman's famous line about how no two countries that have a McDonald's have ever gone to war. I just saw that quoted in the FT yesterday. However, not only is there a McDonald's in Belgrade, there was a prominent story about it during the most prominent war of recent years. And all the countries ranged against it had McDonald's. But I'm sure someone will repeat it tomorrow. God knows I've heard it a million times without realizing. This must be how the big lie works :o)
I think my all time favorite in this category, probably because it was my first time, is when I heard Germaine Greer say that, when Stokely Carmichael said the only position for a woman in the movement is prone, "He probably meant supine -- but who am I to question his sexual tastes?" Now that was arch :o)
Michael