Empire, American style

Five or six years ago, I was reading the newspaper and watching the analysts on television news programs discuss how the United States was trying to build an “empire.” I was fairly young at the time, but I knew how foolish and ignorant this all sounded. After the age of Manifest Destiny passed, the United States has stayed relatively the same size. If the United States was “trying to build an empire,” the victories the United States has experienced through war should have increased the size of its “empire.” However, the United States has remained relatively the same size since it purchased Alaska from the Russians in 1867. In fact, it has grown smaller after granting independence to the Philippines in 1946 and relinquishing other territory. How can anybody claim the United States is trying to create an empire when it allows its conquered enemies to keep their land and willingly grants independence to its colonies?\nI recently made a trip to Sweden, and now I see that the United States, while not trying to build an empire, already has an “empire” that spans the globe. It wasn’t through military conquest, but rather through economic and cultural influence. Everywhere I went, I saw American influence. I watched American television programs with Swedish subtitles on the bottom, noticed people singing in English to American songs and could not find a 20-mile stretch without a McDonald’s. My first day in Sweden, I approached a store clerk with the intention of buying a drink. I struggled to communicate because I knew nothing of the Swedish language, but she seemed to understand my frustration and began communicating easily with me in English. Another day I was talking in English with my friend’s younger brother who was only around the age of 12 but could speak nearly perfect English. It seems like Swedish school children begin to learn English at a fairly early age, but his little brother had just started learning it at school a year ago. How could all these people know English well enough to communicate with me? The answer isn’t that they learned it well through the school. Through American movies, American songs and even Internet chat rooms, my friend’s younger brother and most of the people in Sweden have been essentially “Americanized.” Read articles from media all around the world, and it’s obvious that elements within almost every country have been “Americanized,” even those countries that would appear to be our enemies, like Venezuela and Iran.\nWhile the analysts were wrong about the United States trying to conquer the world through militaristic means, they were right that the United States was conquering the world. The entertainment industry, along with the many U.S. companies that stretch across international lines, has delivered the American way of life to people all around the world. While many oppose the new way of life, many more have learned to accept it and love it.