National Greatness and Christian Morality

Rick Santorum has been getting mocked around the web for this bit of historical analysis:

If you look at every European country that has had world domination, a world presence, from the French to the British -- 100 years ago, the sun didn't set on the British Empire. If you look at that empire today -- why? Because they lost heart and faith in their heart in themselves and in their mission, who they were and what values they wanted to spread around the world. Not just for the betterment of the world, but safety and security and the benefit of their country. We have taken up that cause. 

In Obama, he said, "We have a president who doesn't believe in America."

For a self-proclaimed Christian, Santorum has a remarkably schoolyard bully view of what it means for a nation to be great. Greatness, he argues, means having a big empire, ruling lots of people all over the world, and (especially) having the determination and wherewithal to keep it. Yes, he throws in quick white man's burden line about bettering the world, but he doesn't even consider the possibility that the British gave up their empire because they decided this was the right thing to do. No, they lost the "values" that had won them their empire in the first place. Actually, this is true; they especially lost their belief in slaughtering Indians and Kenyans for Queen and Country. 

There have been times in human history when empires could be reasonably humane systems, benefiting a majority of their inhabitants. But once the age of ideology got underway, and it became an article of faith among the world's elites that every people should rule itself, and that colonialism was a great evil, it was no longer possible for empire to be a civilizing force. After 1945, empires could only be maintained as police states. The British, to their eternal credit, realized this, and promoted the independence of their former subjects. That proved to be a boon for some of them and a disaster for others, but continued colonial rule would not have been pretty anywhere.

To see all of this history as a morality play about national will is grotesque. To seek an empire just to prove your own greatness is, I would argue, un-American, and it is certainly un-Christian.