Theodore Dalrymple has a superb article in the latest City Journal on the experience of empire. Dalrymple is, I think, too pessimistic about the possibility of drawing hopeful and practical lessons for our current challenge in the Middle East from the British imperial experience. Nonetheless, Dalrymple’s article is a useful corrective to my new piece on “Democratic Imperialism.” Of course, my own piece is a corrective to the excessive optimism of democratizing enthusiasts. So Dalrymple is about as pessimistic as you can conceivably get.