//we don't have an empire, never had an empire, never will have an empire//
When I employed the term I had in mind as an audience people whose understanding of it was not formed by George Lucas. Of course we're an empire. We do not, as 7% of the world's population, get to consume 40% of its resources merely because we are clever and virtuous (I don't, incidentally, have a problem with 7%/40% disparity in itself--certainly as an American citizen I find it personally more congenial than I would were the numbers reversed--but I don't regard the numbers and the measures taken to maintain them as reasons for the rest of the world to love us). It requires the maintenance of a global network of clients, puppets, alliances of convenience. Since WWII we've particularly favored working through regimes who can do the dirty work on our behalf, so that Uncle Sam's gloves can retain at least the appearance of whiteness. And like any mature empire...
//Even to use the word in passing is offensive to a patriot//
--we are indignant when the loftiness of our purpose is questioned. Don't these ignorant savages understand that we're expending blood and treasure to bring them peace and enlightenment? Why are they such ungrateful and churlish wretches? This was true of Rome; of the British Empire; of the Sovs (Ivan Sixpack used to complain of all the subsidies provided to the ungrateful Eastern Europeans); and, of course, of the Land of the Free.
If it comforts you to buy into the myth of a benign national purpose, you are welcome to it, but you run the risk of appearing too cute for words when you earnestly argue the case for Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to the grownups.
cordially,