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<p>'Chalmers Johnson, a true son of the wisest and best of the founding
generation, spoke the language of James Madison, when he argued that a
republic could not maintain more than 700 military bases on foreign
soil and retain its own freedom.</p>
<p>It was a Madisonian impulse that caused Johnson to warn us that "as
militarism, the arrogance of power, and the euphemisms required to
justify imperialism inevitably conflict with America's democratic
structure of government and distort its culture and basic values, I
fear that we will lose our country."</p>
<p>It is a similarly Madisonian impulse, or what remains of it, that
will cause genuine patriots to read Johnson as they do the founders for
generations to come.'</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>[It is a sort of sorrow that we too frequently dismiss our friends
and potential allies because they see fit to support ideas that we
don't exactly agree with. We shed too much of our own blood upon the
ghastly altar of partisanism, on the one hand dissing a group because
of their confused religiosity (not because of their faith) and on the
other hand attacking another group as being immoral (rather than
accepting their human condition). I think we can all accept goodness
as good and we can agree on some of the things in our world that are
truly not only lacking in truth and value but also malicious and
dangerously destructive to our being. <br>
</p>
<p>Chalmers Johnson passed away this week as I noted previously. He
was admired by anarchists, conservatives, libertarians and even
progressives and liberals.<br>
</p>
<p>Lew Rockwell, the Daily Paul, and even The Nation noted his passing.
<br>
</p>
<p>John Nichols at The Nation wrote a particularly good tribute to
Chalmers Johnson. - ewj]<br>
</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/156598/chalmers-johnson-and-patriotic-struggle-against-empire">http://www.thenation.com/blog/156598/chalmers-johnson-and-patriotic-struggle-against-empire</a><br>
</p>
<p>Johnson, <a
href="http://www.thenation.com/search/apachesolr_search/chalmers%20johnson">a
frequent contributor to <em>The Nation</em></a> in his later years,
argued in his most impressive book, <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Sorrows-Empire-Militarism-Republic-American/dp/0805077979/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c"><em>The
Sorrows of Empire</em></a>, that Americans needed to recognize
something that their leaders denied: that the United States, a nation
founded in opposition to empire, had become an empire.</p>
<p>"<i>The Sorrows of Empire</i> was written during the American
preparations for and launching of the invasions and occupations of
Afghanistan and Iraq," he explained. "I began to study our continuous
military buildup since World War II and the 737 military bases we
currently maintain in other people's countries. This empire of bases is
the concrete manifestation of our global hegemony, and many of the
blowback-inducing wars we have conducted had as their true purpose the
sustaining and expanding of this network. We do not think of these
overseas deployments as a form of empire; in fact, most Americans do
not give them any thought at all until something truly shocking, such
as the treatment of prisoners a Guantánamo Bay, brings them to our
attention. But the people living next door to these bases and dealing
with the swaggering soldiers who brawl and sometimes rape their women
certainly think of them as imperial enclaves, just as the people of
ancient Iberia or nineteenth-century India knew that they were victims
of foreign colonization."</p>
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