"I expect we will have our war."

So says Jerry Pournelle here. Will it mean the advent of the American empire and the death of the old republic? He thinks so. Some, like Joseph Sobran, think it's already happened.

It is not quite the Republic that Franklin wondered if we would keep, nor is the privilege of imperial citizenship the same as the rights of a free man in a free republic; but it will not be long before there are none who remember what that kind of freedom was like.