History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people recognize that novelists do research to get the facts right - how a glove factory works, for example, or how courtesans in imperial Japan dressed.
We are still faced, even in Europe, with the return of imperialist tendencies, attempts to change borders by force, assaults on other states, taking their land, enslaving citizens.
I love all the Imperial Valley, man.
I'm old enough to remember Richard Nixon. They called it the imperial presidency when he was refusing to spend money that Congress had appropriated.
Nero may have understood how to tune his cithern, but he disgraced his imperial office both by slackening and by tightening the strings.
Obama must scrutinize and disassemble the post-Sept. 11 imperial presidency, even if he reduces his own power in the process.
Americans are not intrinsically imperial, but we ended up dominant by default: Europe disappeared after the Second World War, the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, so here we are.
The truth is that neither British nor American imperialism was or is idealistic. It has always been driven by economic or strategic interests.
If imperialism is not banished from the country, China will perish as a nation. If China does not perish, then imperialism cannot remain.
China has no desire to replace Western imperialism in Asia with an Oriental imperialism or isolationism of its own or anyone else.
