Robert Kagan shows in his brilliant and absorbing "Dangerous Nation," the U.S. has always been an empire and a "menace," not only to its ill-governed neighbors but also to tyrants and hegemons across the world.
Americans broke with Britain not because it was an empire but because it was not imperialist enough. As Mr. Kagan notes, London gave mortal offense to the colonists through the Proclamation Line of 1763, which banned any further expansion that might come at the expense of the Indian tribes. It imposed this restriction some time before it seriously attempted to put British hands in American pockets.
Conservative powers such as Austria, Prussia and Russia, who did not welcome the emergence of an ideological and strategic competitor in the West. John Quincy Adams remarked approvingly that "the universal feeling of Europe in witnessing the gigantic growth of our population is that we shall, if united, become a very dangerous member of the society of nations." Hence Mr. Kagan's ironically approving title.
Mr. Kagan is much too subtle a writer to make direct comparisons with our own times, but they are ubiquitous in "Dangerous Nation"--hiding, as it were, in plain sight. Thus he speaks of Benjamin Franklin's plans for a "pre-emptive strike" against the French in the 1750s, by expelling them from Quebec before they could overrun the 13 colonies. There are clear echoes of Mr. Bush's Second Inaugural when Mr. Kagan writes that the Founding Fathers "believed their own fate was in some way tied to the cause of liberalism and republicanism both within and beyond their borders."
The question of whether Latin America was "ready" for representative government, which so vexed 19th-century Americans, is surely intended to remind us of the debates today over whether the Middle East is suited to democracy. And Mr. Kagan's handling of the Spanish-American War of 1898 reads like an extended analogy to the NATO intervention in Kosovo a century later--great powers must sometimes intervene in nonvital zones, to lessen suffering and contain oppressive regimes.
Interestingly, some of the most bitter opponents of this tradition have been Southerners. They had seen American moral crusading and "nation building" in action during the Civil War and Reconstruction, Mr. Kagan reminds us, and they did not like it one bit. It is no accident, surely, that Sen. William Fulbright, whose critique of the "arrogance" of American power in the 1960s was one of the shibboleths of the antiwar movement, should have come from Arkansas. No surprise either that Sen. Robert Byrd's fulminations against the Iraq war should come from a man who was once a proud citizen of the segregated South.
But they may want to think before they strike. As it happens, Democrats have special reason to look forward to the 20th-century sequel, for Mr. Kagan's narrative of American power is, in many ways, the story of their own party. Soon enough, the torch will pass to Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy and, if we think of NATO's belated Balkan intervention, even Bill Clinton. There should be something in this project for almost everyone.
Joel Kotkin also has an article, 400,000,000, on the WSJ editorial page today behind the subscriber curtain. In it he notes, I summarize and quote:
The U. S. is the only leading industrial power with a growing population. Taken together, our greatest enemies of the 20th Century, Germany, Japan and Russia are projected to have 130 million fewer people than we do.
While America will age, it will remain one of, if not, the most youthful developed country in the world. In populations where fewer people have children and more of the population is older and elderly there is less likely to be concerned about future generations, and less likely to act about like adults whose primary concerns center on the fate of their offspring and their offsprin's offspring.
Some fear majority minority populations in the U. S. that willdilute the American melting pot work ethic. But few migrate to the U. S. to recreate the conditions they fled in Mexico, Iran, China or Cuba. (We're going to America because we're Americans. We were just born in the wrong place. - Peter Schramm)
As Tocqueville noted over 170 years afo, America has flourished not because of geniuses in Washington, but due to its Constitution, fertile land mass, egalitarianism, entrepreneurship unique spriitual vitality and attachment to local community and family. (I would add appreciation for education and innovation to that list) This combination of factors has always made us different from othe countries.
These factors do much to explain why we have reached the 300 million milestone at a time when most of our primary competitors are either stagnating or shrinking.
If we continue to use our immigration policies to skim the cream from foreign countries through meritocratic immigration policies, it is interesting to contemplate what America's position in the world could be after it's second 200 years have elapsed. 
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