At its height in the 1920s, the British Empire was the largest empire the world had ever known—surpassing even the Roman Empire. In fact, the British Empire was so far-flung it was said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire” because its global span guaranteed that the sun was always shining on at least one of its many colonies or subject nations.

For almost 350 years, between 1600 and 1948, the British empire enveloped 25% of the world’s land surface, including large swathes of North America, Australia, Africa, Asia, and South America. At its height in 1921, It included some 425 million inhabitants or around 23% of the world’s population.

But by the end of World War II, the British Empire was insolvent and effectively kaput, and in 1997, it handed over Hong Kong, its last colony, to China.

The only empire still functioning in the post-war world was what some refer to as the “American Empire”—and there is considerable debate about whether or not America was ever a real “empire” in the same way the British or the Roman empires were. In fact, the phrase “American Empire” relates more to the political, economic, military, and cultural influence the United States has had on the world since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898 rather than the vast, far-flung physical colonies of the British Empire.

Nevertheless, after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. was the major power in the world, and its clout was undeniable. Whether America was a genuine empire remains a question of semantics. Suffice it to say, the United States was the Big Kid on the block whom you didn’t mess with.

How times have changed. Everybody is messing with the big kid on the block today. Check out these examples:

• Iranian-backed Islamic terrorists have attacked American forces throughout the Middle East more than 120 times since October with only a minimal response by our feckless president. The big kid on the block is losing his muscle and courage.
• As many as eight million illegal migrants—some of whom are on terrorist watch lists and most of whom have neither an education nor skills—have invaded the United States with impunity through our porous southern borders. Yes, it is an invasion, and at some point, we are going to suffer from it when terrorist cells begin their attacks on innocent Americans. We are already seeing subtle attacks as illegal migrants bring in diseases that were once thought to have been eradicated in America, such as measles, tuberculosis, and polio. All of this is ignored by Biden and his minions because, in their eyes, eight to ten million illegal migrants flooding our country represent Democrat votes in the future.

• Only 30 percent of American students nationwide can read, write, and do math at grade level, thereby ensuring that in an era in which technology is advancing at a precipitous pace, future generations will have neither the education nor the critical thinking skills needed to contend with better educated and qualified Chinese competitors.
• Incompetent cabinet members such as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and Attorney General Merrick Garland—to name just a few—have managed to enfeeble and weaponize the agencies they oversee.
• The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) craze has promoted division, segregation, and racism rather than unity. DEI has driven a wedge between Americans. It has actually encouraged racism by demanding that white workers be “less white”—code for feeling guilty about their skin color. Recently, for example, the United Federation of Teachers was obliged to cancel a workshop on the “harmful effects of whiteness” after public backlash.
• The failed economic policy called “Bidenomics” continues to make life miserable for Americans.  A Gallup Poll released recently found that only 32 percent of voters approve of the president’s handling of the economy. Under Biden, Americans have been battered with higher prices for staple consumer goods, and wage gains have failed to keep pace with inflation. As a result, credit card debt is skyrocketing. In fact, Americans’ total outstanding credit card debt just surpassed the $1 trillion threshold. Another recent survey by The Lending Club revealed that 61 percent of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck. That’s Bidenomics in a nutshell.
• Smash and grab, also known as “flash mob” robberies, have crippled large Democrat-run cities such as San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and even Washington D.C. as business after business shut down and move out. Why? Judges and prosecutors in those cities have decided that crimes that were once felonies should be treated as misdemeanors, with perpetrators quickly released to steal again and again. Some race hustlers insist that flash mob thefts committed by minorities should be viewed as a form of “reparations” for what they consider decades of political and economic oppression.

• When a reigning president seeks to imprison his chief political rival during a presidential race and condemns 75 million Americans who voted for his opponent as domestic terrorists and extremists, America is no longer a democratic republic but a dictatorship run by political thugs who have weaponized the levers of legal and political power. Never in the history of America has a sitting president attempted to eliminate a political rival by incarcerating him. Yet that is what Joe Biden and his corrupt minions in the FBI, Justice Department, and CIA are doing to Donald Trump.

That brings me back to this question: Are we witnessing the end of the American Empire? Is the sun setting on the greatest and most successful experiment in republican democracy the world has ever seen?

It sure seems that way.

When the British Empire ended in 1948, it was largely because of external forces—colonies and subject nations demanded and, in some cases, fought for their independence from an empire that no longer had neither the resources nor the will to hold itself together.

As we watch the American Empire crumble all around us, it is not an external enemy who is obliterating America. Our destruction is being accomplished by internal forces—leftists who hate America and who have managed to latch onto the levers of power.

It is driven by radical socialists and communists who despise capitalism, freedom of speech, and American exceptionalism. They loathe the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and even the Declaration of Independence and all of the individual freedoms those documents endorse. They have learned that the way to destroy America is through division and the fueling of racial, ethnic, and religious hatred that pits one segment of our nation against another—the flawed and noxious philosophy that fuels diversity, equity, and inclusion.

DEI and deceitful Critical Race Theory are right out of the socialist/communist playbook. Divide and conquer. Rewrite history so impressionable children will come to disdain America. Use education at all levels to indoctrinate rather than educate the population. Suppress uninhibited and honest expression by condemning as insurrectionists and terrorists those who criticize the government and the elites who believe they have a divine right to rule us rather than serve us.

So, I will ask again.  Are we witnessing the end of the American Empire?

I still am not sure that America was ever an empire in the classic sense. I have always regarded America as a magnificent idea that became a nation.

That we have people in power today who are working to crush that idea and thereby annihilate the world’s first and most successful democratic republic leads me to believe the sun is indeed setting on our nation.

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