For the avoidance of doubt:

All empires are bad.

All empires have always been bad.

All empires always will be bad.

The concept of empire is bad.

The prerequisites for empire are bad.

And the people who like empires — any of them — are bad.

Do not have fondness for empires.

Do not have nostalgia for them.

Empires by definition colonize and rule space — physical, figurative, or both — that might otherwise be free.

Resist the urge to romanticize empire. It was never good, and it never will be.