Hyperpower: The shot heard round the world

The shot heard round the world during the beginning of the American War for Independence was indeed heard in every country that has since rebelled against dictatorship and monarchy and chosen liberty and democracy. First throughout Europe and the rest of the Americas, then India, then through the old Soviet Block nations, the Arab Spring as a spurt at least, now undercurrents in China as well as other nations. Even if those revolutions may point to other inspirations, ever since America became an independent democracy, no matter the realities or debates about "how" democratic it is, people around the globe have known and been able to point to one place on earth where people stood up and declared their freedom and still declare it.

The American experiment has continued with setbacks and struggles. The American culture has grown into a distinct one through the first two centuries of its existence. That culture permeates the entire world through its television, movies, books, magazines, news, fashion, music, and other forms of art. Governments and religious institutions try to slow it or stop it but it can't be stopped because it consists of ideas, especially of ideas about freedoms that all should enjoy.

And what makes those ideas about freedom so irresistible is their nature as indicated by Thomas Jefferson, they are self-evident. Just as knowing that wind is real even though you can't see it or that gravity is real because you can sense it and feel it or that time is real because its passing leaves its marks, freedom of speech, of thought, of religion, of expression, and all of the other freedoms we hold dear and that our laws maintain, seem naturally right, correct, hard to argue against, true.

Even though America may win some military battles and wars and loose others, the power of its culture ceaselessly marches forward into every other culture in the world winning victory after victory, reshaping the world to at least grab hold of the freedoms at its core. Instead of a superpower, this cultural hegemony suggest what has been called hyperpower, an influence above and beyond military, political, and economic supremacy.