Right off the bat the book Citizens of the Empire is provocative in nature, but Robert Jensen forces the reader to reevaluate everything they thought they knew about American foreign policy after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Radical Jensen sets out on a mission to display how the illegitimate authority of the American Government has failed its people. At the end of his book, Jensen asks the reader a very critical question: "Do we have the courage to stop being Americans and become human beings? " (Jensen, 135). This personally makes me feel guilty after being enlightened on the truth behind America's selfish nature. It is apparent to me that I have succumbed to the influence of propaganda that the government sets forth for me as well as all other uninformed Americans. Thinking of this country as the "greatest nation on earth " and being patriotic used to be the foundations of how I identified myself as an American citizen. I am now forced to question the legitimacy of political rhetoric I grew up believing in. .
The claim that America is the greatest nation on Earth is a fantasy that almost all, if not most, Americans have indulged themselves in. Jensen most definitely does not see America this way though. The foundation of this country was formed from a huge genocide killing almost all of the indigenous population, and slavery is the second genocide Americans are guilty of. The majority of America's wealth and growth would not have been possible without slavery so what is so great about killing countless amount of slaves in order to raise a country's wealth? -Nothing. Now with Imperialist America expanding onto Third World countries we find ourselves in perhaps a third American genocide. This idea that America is "the greatest nation on earth " increases the risk of people everywhere by allowing leaders to justify wars of conquest with it. It's very ironic that such a great nation gives less then one percent of its money every year to foreign aid, but the majority of America's money is spent on a large military budget that "defends our freedom ".