False analogies ...

... and a weak grasp of history: In the Hour of Our Pride. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

"In many ways, Mr. Murphy's argument is less about America in general than about the Bush administration in particular. Thus he worries about the transfer of government functions to private contractors like Halliburton, seeing an analogy to the Roman system of patronage."

What is telling is how hatred for the Bush administration has inspired this bogus historicizing. Murphy would do well to look up the number of companies in the world besides Halliburton that could have taken on the contracts he objects to (I believe it is less than five and most are not American). He would also do well to read Amaury De Riencourt's 1958 book The Coming Caesars and also his 1968 book The American Empire.