Erik, I cannot argue with you as to whether America was/is an empire. It is. But I would suggest that it is not much different from the European empires that preceded it. For whatever self-justifications any empire has, its underlying motivation is always economic. Historically, most empires have cloaked their greed in platitudes such as "the white man's burden" or "bringing civilization and enlightenment" but, like war, economics are at the root. Your Viking ancestors were perhaps the least hypocritical empire builders, but build an empire they did--Normandy, Sicily, and Russia were parts of it.

As a descendant of the Scottish enablers of the British Empire, and a veteran of the Vietnam War, I am most familiar with those histories. There were elements of both British and American politics that saw through the hypocrisy and decried the immorality of empire, but money usually wins. In America, after the Spanish-American War, opposition to the occupation of Cuba and the Philippines was particularly vehement because of fears of the corrupting effects of colonialism.

American "exceptionalism" is a profound problem in American culture and politics. But we are actually too similar to all the republican empires of history, like Athens, Rome, the Netherlands, and France. And, true to form, China and India, as their power grows, are demonstrating their own imperial aspirations.