State of the Empire....(A commentary from a Greek in an age of Romans...)

With messianic undertones fully in place Bush yet again pushes for global 'democratic' revolution, talking sweetly while implicitly waving the big stick. Syria and Iran are named and shamed and the world is to be remade in the pure Christian image of the 'chosen' nation. The tropes of Trotsky style global revolution and US exceptionalism are dangerously merged in this speech, a more poisonous cocktail of ideologies I cannot think of...

If anything this speech exposes the cultural gap between the States and the UK and the alien tenor of US political discourse; the United States truly is the nation with a 'soul of church'. If anything the State of the Union makes me appreciate the parliamentary system and definitely shows the problems with merging the roles of head of state with head of the executive, elected monarchs are just as bad as the hereditary kind in my book...