Now that liberal imperialism is being dismantled we can acknowledge that it was a noble idea in theory. No decent person can deny that the idea of a world where a noble policeman enforces rules and norms protecting the weak from the strong and ensuring the dignity of each individual is an attractive concept. The problem this goal was completely beyond the capacity of the actually-existing U.S. government and population to ever implement. This was clear to anyone who bothered scrutinizing what was actually happening in this imperium, or who was familiar with what most government functionaries did or experienced abroad. Leave aside the massive incompetence, fraud, and crime that characterized the infamous Iraq and Afghanistan projects (every single American taxpayer should read “The Afghanistan Papers”), the fact is that barely anyone knows how our money and efforts are actually being spent all over the world. When we do look into it it’s often disturbing or mystifying. In addition to hemorrhaging tremendous money and goodwill by ineptly becoming party to other peoples problems, or trying to order their affairs, despite our proclaimed noble intentions we frequently find ourselves becoming involved in mass murder and endless foreign ethnic conflict, including most recently in Israel-Palestine. This incompetently implemented imperial project has tarnished the reputation of ordinary Americans, who are generally good people and don’t understand why the actions of their imperial officials in distant places occasionally generates vociferous hatred and backlash against them. This project has lost the support of the public after imperial elites repeatedly failed to deliver on the promise that they should be empowered to improve the world. The bill is coming due because they can no longer successfully convince people otherwise, or cover up their obvious failures. The beautiful dream of liberal order is coming to an end now, and we should expect a very painful adjustment process in the short-medium term as accompanies the collapse of any empire. But we should now be happy aiming for a more humble and achievable goal of making the United States a good place to live for every citizen, and perhaps influencing the rest of the world more by our good example than by intruding on their affairs with violence and money.