Dark Star

Uh... no.

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Leftwing Myths Busted: "John Hawkins interviews Michael Medved who busts many leftwing myths about America:

One of the classic definitions of an imperialist power is a nation with an insatiable appetite for domination, conquest, and new land. The best proof that the United States doesn't fit that definition is one word: Canada. This great and largely defenseless nation to our north has co-existed with our nation and since a failed attempt to capture Canada in the war of 1812, which we lost by the way, we have left Canada very much alone. If we had been the kind of greedy imperialist power that America's critics allege, then why did we establish flourishing independent republics and nations like Japan, Germany, the Philippines, South Korea -- nations that we once occupied?
The American way, even with nations we fought against in war, is to go in, achieve whatever military aims we mean to achieve, and then eventually to go home, in every case, leaving the nation impacted better off than it was before. I think that if you look at all of the flourishing parts of Planet Earth, almost without exception, it has a great deal to do with the United States.

If you look at the darkest corners of the earth, you'll find nations that have had much less to do with the United States. In other words, if you take a list of nations on one side and look at the nations that are more productive, more free, more enlightened -- and then take a list of nations on the other side that would include nations like North Korea, Cuba, or nations of the Islamic World, like Iran -- the nations that have been less influenced by our nation are the less fortunate nations of Planet Earth. That says a great deal about the true nature of American influence."

(Via The Jawa Report.)