It’s really difficult to fit this much gee-whiz cluelessness into a single piece. But Jonah Goldberg, firing wildly on all cylinders, gets the job done.

First, we get the straight-faced denial that the United States is an empire. Then we get the acknolwedgement that, well, sure we have lots off military bases in other countries. (Chalmers Johnson counts a full 737 bases in at least 130 countries; it’s important to note that Goldberg avoids mentining any exact figures, specifically in order to give the impression that sure, we may have, you know, one or two here and there, but really now, it’s not that big a deal. Though in 2005, according to Johnson, the Pentagon calcluated that our overseas bases were worth $127 billion. Big deal? Your call.)

Goldberg then goes on to suggest that if a country wants the U.S. to abandon its bases, all it has to do is ask. Or in the case of Uzbekistan, send us an eviction notice.

“We’ve made it clear,” Goldberg has the temerity to write, “that we’ll leave Iraq if the Iraqis ask.”

And, for example, the several hundred million we’ve spent on one 16-square mile air base alone near Baghdad, Balad? Just consider that our gift to you.

Then we get claims that anyone asserting that “expansion of the military-industrial complex leads to contraction of freedom at home” is full of bunk: “Women got the vote largely thanks to World War I.”

Uh, no. The National Woman Suffrage Association was formed in 1869, and women securing the right to vote was the result of decades of progressive, political pressure that culminated with Woodrow Wilson backing women’s suffrage as a “war measure” - but the 19th Amendment wasn’t even passed by Congress until 1919, after the war was over.

And we might ask Jonah about the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act.

We could go on, but why bother? Jonah concludes that if the United States is an empire, it’s the right sort of empire, that whatever our influence it’s entirely because we are “the leader of the free world, offering help and guidance, peace and prosperity” - why, just ask the Iraqis! - and “asking little in return.”

This is history for people who don’t know history, foreign policy for those who can see foreign policy only through their own American eyes, morality for those who have already accepted the notion that they and their country represent the absolute pinnacle of morality.

Call it imperialism for dummies. And the whole Ron Paul movement exists specifically as a reaction to it.