I think it is better to say that our conquests were made for profit, but our profit was compensation for the cost of dragging mankind out of tyranny, ignorance, poverty, starvation, disease. And that we started with violence, moved to law, moved to commerce, and then to ostracization from or access to, the prosperity we created. We did the best we could. We didn’t often do it well. But will still did it and no other culture did. Or even came close. (Well, technically, it sure looks like Cyrus the Great actually tried. Gotta give Cyrus and the Dariuses their due. They tried. They had engineering. They just didn’t have truth (administration) like the romans did.
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-03 14:47:00 UTC