Over at Eschaton they're spawning bloggers again, which opening clashes strongly with the title I envision for this post

Robert M. Jeffers commented on a book review in Harper' on Niall Ferguson's Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. I been wrapping books in Amazon links recently, but not this one because NO ONE should buy it.

Ferguson's argument is that we (Americans) just aren't ruthless enough, yet. Which means, yes, we could have won in Vietnam, if we'd just had the belly for it. Now America faces "the growing power of liberalism" (don't you all feel better now?), which prevents us from exercising our true authority as the benevolent Empire the Romans...oh, sorry, the British, once were.

Is this sufficient absurdity? No.

How to overcome this and other obstacles to the Pax Americana? Apparently by reining in the deficit by cutting Social Security and Medicare spending. The "less privileged" (Grandin's words, now [P6: Grandin is the reviewer]) would be made: "leaner and meaner, more willing to shoulder the burdens of empire. Just as poverty drove the Irish and Scots into Britain's colonial army, 'illegal immigrants, the jobless,' and 'convicts' could help fill the ranks of Washington's imperial legion." (Apparently Jonathan Swift and Jeremiah were both wrong: poverty is good for sovereigns!). "Ferguson is especially enthusiastic that African Americans might become 'the Celts of the American Empire.' And once he dispense with what here passes for social democracy, he sets his sights on political democracy. Successful empires, Ferguson writes, require 'the resolve of the masters and the consent of the subjects.'"

"African Americans might become 'the Celts of the American Empire.'"

By which he means cannon fodder. That ain't spears and swords they're fighting with.

Hence the title of the post.