&gt; The Imperial Grand Moff Tarkin is no worse than Democratic President Harry S. Truman — and no one worth listening to considers Truman to be a monster.<p>OK. So how do we start considering Truman to be a monster? He slaughtered 129,000 people, mostly civilians, in cold blood.<p>The author makes a perfectly sound argument that the Empire was <i>no worse than</i> America, and then somehow drives that to the conclusion that the Empire was good by refusing to budge on the cultural dogma that America can only possibly be good. There&#x27;s a much simpler answer here, it seems to me.