Well, I'm certainly not in favor of empire... especially as an Alaskan I find the fact that I live in an oil/minerals/fisheries resource extraction colony somew

Well, I'm certainly not in favor of empire... especially as an Alaskan I find the fact that I live in an oil/minerals/fisheries resource extraction colony somewhat distressing. I will say that "Empire" in the "get land and make the people who live there your people" is probably better than "empire" as in "control resources of far flung distant lands and give the locals no say in the matter." If you're from American Samoa, you're probably better off as a somewhat disjoint and weird (the relationship the US has with AmSam is kind of strange) colony than if you're from Samoa proper. At least from the standpoint of GDP. I haven't been to either to be clear (though I have significant amounts of friends who have and have lived there), by all accounts the conditions in AmSam are quite a bit better and I don't think that's just people mad at opposing Ali'is or whatever. I don't know, but my big gripe as an Alaskan is that most of the land up here is owned by the feds or the state and is locked up and unavailable for development because of choices that people from the lower 48 make. People down south think they know what's "best" for us up here and it's infuriating. That said, at least I have a slight choice in who I vote for etc. Compare that with say, Venezuela or Iraq or wherever. Those people are having their resource policies largely dictated to them and have exactly zero say in the matter. They're "free" to decide what they do with their area on paper, but not really. Does anyone here really live under the illusion that Panama could really decide to close the canal to American ships? Or just look at Cuba. Empire is probably pretty bad, yeah, I ain't gonna dispute that, but "empire" with inclusion in the empire and some representation is probably (probably) better than having terms dictated to you from the imperial core and enforced by the barrel of a gun. I don't know. I totally understand people not really wanting to be a part of the empire - hell, I don't even really consider myself an American as an Alaskan, so I get it, but also, when I travel I'm pretty glad I've got an American passport than say, a Russian one, or even an independent Alaska one...