The pseudonym of a contributor who believes that the USA in particular and the West in general have lost their way and are heading for the rubbish tip of history. For the usual reasons: arrogance, stupidity, improvidence and war. In 1821 Adams warned what would happen if his country ceased to speak “the language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights” and instead went “abroad in search of monsters to destroy”.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

Whether or not one accepts his belief that the America’s “glory was liberty”, its voice in today’s world is “dominion”; its search for monsters has made it the world’s “dictatress”.