The USA is an Imperialist Power

Hello again! Good debating, it looks like I have my work cut out for me :)First of all, I chose the term imperialist specifically, so let us separate "imperialist" from "empire." According to good old dictionary.com "imperialism" is the "policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies," note how this differs from the necessity of having an emperor or powerful sovereign, or even, for that matter, of being a united group of nations!I disagree entirely that corporations do not have anything to do with the government. Firstly, the US government taxes them, secondly the US government bails them out (think 2008) and thirdly empires, or imperialist powers, are made by investing and such. You mentioned the British Empire in your definition, and I think that the end of it in the 1950s is a perfect example. British investors in the Suez Canal were threatened when Nasser nationalized it, therefore the British government invaded Egypt to protect it's interests - just as the US did with Kuwait in 1992 to protect it from Iraqi interests. If your nation monopolizes the goods of other nations, it is imperialist, because it is extending the "authourity" of it's "nation over foreign countries." Now you will not deny that a nation includes the people within it!For the next point, Canada and America were not both British colonies to begin with. Canada began with New France, and when we last were both colonies in 1775 Canada had a population of 90,000(1) and America had a poplation of 2.5 million (2). Vastly different, and as for the effects of this on cultural influence, let us take an example with similar demographic and geographic features, China and Japan. China has 10x the population, but is incredibly different from Japan. On the other hand, let us take an imperialist power, Rome, which exerted it's influence and culture over all of it's empire even though it's population was SMALLER than the rest of it's empire as a whole. Celtic traditions began to die, as historians have figured out, but if you want a purely objective point of view all you need do is to look here (3) at the head of the Roman god Mercury, found in Roman Britain and obviously worshipped - thus Rome exerted it's influence over the Celts.Obama is a corporatist, juse like Bush was, and this is evident in his FORCING Americans to buy corporate healthcare or otherwise pay a tax!(4) This is a prime example of the US government being in league with it's corporations. Marijuana is not legal in the US, by federal law.As for countries you've temporarily taken over, you haven't had to remain as you controlled them economically already. Also, the US concept of "rebuilding" would seem to be putting dictators into power, once more I cite Chile in 1973 for free market Pinochet, Panaman independence in 1904 for the Suez Canal, President Arbenz in Guatemala 1953-54 (democratically elected), and more that can be seen here,(5) and that is South America alone.If I don't have enough space to reply here I'll finish next time. The American corporate class, the richest 1% who control 40% of the wealth, parallels the Roman equites I mentioned earlier, and the American aristocracy, and the conflict between the two. If you deny that an American aristocracy exists, remember that the Bush family goes right back to the mid 1800s and Sam P. Bush, the wealthy industrialist in the 1890s.(7)1. http://www.statcan.gc.ca...2. http://geography.about.com...3. http://www.britishmuseum.org...4. http://english.ruvr.ru...5. http://listverse.com...6. http://finance.yahoo.com...7. http://en.wikipedia.org...