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Originally Posted by innerSpaceman
Um, Puerto Rico. Since the Supreme Court just denied Puerto Ricans the right to vote in U.S. presidential elections, what are they - other than a colony? How is a "territory" with no citizenship rights for its denizens anything other than a colony?
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Puerto Rico is a commonwealth.
1. nation or its people: a nation or its people considered as a political entity
2. republic: a nation or state in which the people govern
3. association of states: a group of states that have formed an association for the political and economic benefit of all members
4. people with common interest: a group of people linked by something that they all have in common
Technically, it's not a colony since we pretty much let them do their own thing. We're not trying to impose control over them. Anyhow, they seem to be content with the way things are. In 1998 the House passed a bill calling for elections to decide the island's permanent status. They chose to keep it the way it is.
Puerto Rico is the largest commonwealth of the United States. The rest are small islands, which again, are pretty much left to their own devices. That doesn't qualify as an empire, and certainly doesn't prove that the United States is imperialistic.
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Get out of the books for a moment. Empires of the 21st century are not the Empires of antiquity. The United States is an imperial power by every measure of modern sense.
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What is the "modern sense"? Please pin down a definition, and how the United States fits into it. If there is a "Modern sense" then maybe we should be looking at a new term instead of trying to apply a term that doesn't fit...