the idea of empire is over.

wouldn't that be great...

i think that's probably what we said every time another one hit the rocks of hubris and foundered.

perhaps you are right, and we are finally ready to want/deserve an existence untrammelled by empires/bubbles/yoyo pendula/calculated earthquakes/wars of conquest/attrition and institutional thievery.

there comes a time in every species' life...

secular, moral, civic, political, economic education, get em by seven, they'll be liberal humanists for ever!

(some perhaps after an obligatory period of fashionista rebellion ;))

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty