Imperial America

Here is your opportunity to get something for free from a Swiss bank which normally caters to people with assets of $1 Mio plus - and it is actually good!

It is a monograph containing a 50 page essay in both the original English and a German translation, by Lewis Lapham, the editor in chief of Harper's Magazine, on the evolution & quasi-religious motivation of the US thrust for Empire from a US-liberal (i.e. leftist) point of view. The text is solidly polemic, and thus may be taken with more than a grain of salt, but there is certainly truth to it. Do not forget to read the unusually informative foreword by Hans-Dieter Vontobel, one of the eponymous patrons of the bank!

As a Swiss reader, I was surprised to read of a "doctrine of American exceptionalism", which reminds me very much of our jealeously guarded "Sonderfall Schweiz". Every country is its own special case to the overly patriotic part of its citizenry, I suppose.

And with this, I hope I have regained credit from readers who have scolded me for not attending to their needs during the last two days! ;-)