Well, that’s true for about 50% of the population anyways, and that’s not too bad of any nation at any given time period, historically speaking.

“America is not an empire.”

No, America is a Republic with global projection and with a complicated web of international alliances and interlocking interests. Unfortunately we do not promote Republicanism (the governmental system, not the political party) worldwide, we promote the retarded and enfeebled little sister of the Republic, the democracy. And, more or less unfettered and chaotically employed democracy, is in many ways just as dangerous to the Republic externally as it is internally. If only America promoted Republics around the globe, Republics in actual fact rather than in theoretical nomenclature, instead of democracies, we could have avoided much of the pain we and the world have suffered, and mitigated many of the struggles we have been forced to engage, both internally and externally.

“This means America can, as a practical matter, control less in its sphere of domination than the Soviet or Roman emperors could in their time. But it probably also means it can, ultimately, control more that it needs to in order to maintain the level of dominance that suits its interests.”

An astute observation. To lead you give an example, teach by example and exercise, and then set free. To dominate you demand and enforce on another. But it is always better to control by leadership and example than by demand. For when you control by leadership you encourage others to exceed you as a leader and you encourage others to ever greater acts of heroism and accomplishment, which benefits everyone in the long run, the de facto leader included.

It is the same with your children and/or wife, when you control by leadership, you enable your inferiors to grow and eventually to exceed and supercede you, if they are willing to apply themselves and you have courage enough to ask of them what they can achieve through hard exertion. (Just because, however, a citizen reaches the age to vote does not mean he or she will make wise choices or be an adult in his preferences and actions. Children can become, through training and through self-training, wise and mature, but the right to vote – the democratic right – does nothing to assure the necessity of wisdom, and it is wisdom, not right, which should rule and govern the Republic. Any old fool, and many young fools, can, and do, rule a democracy, as is the same case with the tyranny. The only real historical difference between the unfettered and self-serving democracy and the repressive and self-serving tyranny is in the number of fools needed to call it legitimate. But a Republic must be ruled by the wise – not the same thing as a Senator thank God; despite the Latin root word implications – and the mature. In other words the Republic is not only supposed to be governed by the wise, it is supposed to promote an on-going and multi-generational cycle of self-renewing wisdom in those who will continue the very existence of the Republic. And you can’t do that by simply assuming all votes and all opinions are of equal value, or that the vote of the Bloods gang member and the Nazi is of equal value to that of the philanthropist and the war hero who risked his life to make other men free. And despite the propaganda of the democratic claptrap, it isn’t, and it never was, and it will never be.)

So, to avoid the defects of the democratic model within your own home you allow your wife to become a leader in her own right, through the wise practice of true and responsible leadership. You allow your children to mature. Not by giving them equal authority, but by teaching them how to mature and how to properly employ authority so that when their time comes, they become what they will and can become in their own way. But when you dominate by demand, or exclude and weaken by lax fiat, you do not teach leadership, you teach dependence. For us to teach democracy is in the long run, to teach the nations with whom we are aligned, to be weak and dependent upon us as their partner of control, and to weaken ourselves because instead of being able to delegate matters of economy and security and trust in their capabilities and efforts, we must execute control instead of exercising leadership. We should be teaching the ideals of the Great Republic, not the ideals of the backwards, self-involved, and ultimately self-consumptive democracy. Democracies do not grow men, but over time they do grow numerous Adolphs and Alciabedes. And governments, like men, are known by their fruit.

We want to make adults of the world, not dependents. Build Republics, not mere nations. Nations, like storms, come and go. Republics stand in all weathers. They are far more difficult to build than the mere democracy, but then again they are much more enduring and capable and enterprising than a mere nation. Upon deep roots the eternal stands.

You cannot grow true adults by merely giving children votes and telling them that whatever course they pursue, it is their right, and that their opinions are equal to those of real men and women. Because they are not. Children are not the equivalents of adults and adults do not wish to raise children into becoming ageless juveniles.
And by extended comparison democracies are not the equivalents of true Republics anymore than Republics wish to grow everlasting empires.
Democracies grow self interested, and empires grow fat, lazy, and corrupt, but the Republic grows the future.
If, that is, it has the courage to grow itself, and not mere imitators.