Manifesto Warns of Dangers Associated With an Empire
Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2003
by Alan Murray

An unusual manifesto is circulating through the e-mail boxes of prominent Washingtonians from an ad hoc group calling itself the "Committee for the Republic."

The manifesto is a work in progress, its authors say. But the goal is clear: to educate Americans about the dangers of empire.

"The American Revolution was a nationalist revolt against the British Empire," the draft manifesto argues. "Our country was born as a defiant rejection of the legitimacy of imperialism." Citing the lessons of the classics, it argues that the "inevitable cost of empire" is a loss of political and economic freedom at home. "Domestic liberty is the first casualty of adventurist foreign policy."

Full story here.