Peter Hitchens "gets it."

He does offer this understanding of the War of Northern Aggression in Empires - Have Your Own, or Be Part of Someone Else's. And the Everlasting Church Schools Question:

But back to Mr Squires and his agreeably frank bit of American triumphalism. I wonder what Mr Squires would think of the suggestion that the United States is itself an empire. There is of course the question of the original settlements, which involved taking land and the freedom to roam from the indigenous peoples. Then there is the period of 19th century expansion. What was the Louisiana Purchase if not a colonial acquisition? Then there's the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), as colonial as anything we British ever did in India or Africa.

The differences are these. One, the USA had the sense to have its empire concentrated in one landmass, rather than scattered across the globe. Two, it had the sense not to call its empire an empire. Three, by setting up this empire in the isolated continent of North America, with vast oceans to East and West and weak neighbours incapable of rivalry, the USA assured itself of that great essential of all successful civilisations - physical safety from invasion or encroachment. Four, the American Civil War put an end to any serious idea that the USA was a voluntary assembly of individual states, and made it plain that it was in fact a federal, centralised nation which granted some local limited autonomy but which did not, in practice, permit any of its members to leave. The enormous growth of the Federal state and its agencies (look at the huge federal buildings now to be found in any major city) has both confirmed and strengthened this.

His use of the adjective federal is curious, though.