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Schoolchildren in the UK once colored in maps to mark the boundaries of the British Empire. It would be easier for Americans to count the countries where there isn’t a US military presence. In 2001, there were only 46 of them and, with Obama’s lilypad system for creating a military presence in a temporary base instantly and cheaply, that number has probably dropped. The Soviets put a satellite in orbit. We responded by puting humans on the moon. Other countries are being irresponsible with austerity? We throw the global economy into crisis by pretending that austerity means we might not pay our debt.


Now, our founders saw this sort of idiotic brinksmanship as a serious threat to the stability of the US so it’s writen into our constitution that “the debt of the United States shall not be questioned.” This makes debt ceiling legislation probably unconstitutional,


When a US strike carrier enters a region it usually becomes the single largest air-force


in the area.


but we have a long tradition of ignoring our constitution when it suits our politics, or pretending that it doesn’t really apply to everyone equally. And while we’re ignoring it and disobeying it, or trying to amend it and change it, we frequently talk about what a sacred, holy, and perfect document it is.


I write all of this because I want to make one thing extremely clear: I am not saying in any way that the United Kingdom should be more like the United States. We have a whole raſt of our own extremely severe problems, national insanity notwithstanding, and it would be


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