Early last month I gave some short remarks on the foreign-policy panel at the Mises Institute’s Austrian Scholars Conference. Most of my comments springboarded off of a very interesting paper given by Hunt Tooley on “Empire, Oil, and the Reshaping of the Middle East After World War I.” We can talk frankly about the economic and Realpolitik concerns behind imperialism before and after World War I — but why is it that after World War II any ascription of such motives to the U.S. is apt to be condemned as un-American or unpatriotic? In my comments, which can be heard here (MP3), I suggest that the Cold War creed of American exceptionalism is largely to blame.