The Arrogance of Power written by William J. Fulbright is a very good topic to read about. The author uses pathos throughout this article and will be the examples used in this essay. This article states “that power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations— to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image.” (Fulbright, 2012) The author started his article off very strong and kept you interested during the entire reading. This article the author wrote is a valid argument. He states several examples and facts in his work. When Fulbright wrote, “Man's method of dealing with difficulties in the past has always been to tell everyone else how they should behave. We've all been doing that for centuries. It should be clear by now that this no longer does any good. Everybody has by now been told by everybody else how he should behave.” America has the arrogance of power it is causing our country to fail. America and Americans have “a psychological need that nations seem to have in order to prove they are bigger, better, or stronger than other nations” (Fulbright). “Some”, not all, Americans feel that America is the most powerful nation in the world and must continue to strive towards remaining that way. He also talks about how Hitler and Napoleon had the drive for more power and that is what did them in, in the end. Their want for more power was their greatest weakness because after having all the power they already had they couldn’t stop until they had complete control. Fulbright wrote,” I do not think for a moment that America, with her deeply rooted democratic traditions, is likely to embark upon a campaign to dominate the world in the manner of a Hitler or Napoleon.” (Fulbright) America is still a young country and very power driven. It always wants to lend a helping hand even when they know it doesn’t benefit our country in any way. With our country being so young, Americans need to learn edict when visiting other countries. Fulbright writes about how Americans have no respect for other countries by just looking at how they visit them by being loud and rude, while other countires are quite and respectful. It is something at is learned not already known.
We as a people have created new ways to show power, some examples would be from lifting weights to creating the atomic bomb. Also, anyone can get this way and people don’t even know it. If you are fighting for a promotion or trying to move up the chain in command you are trying to gain power for personal use. It is not a bad thing to try to have power it becomes a bad thing when power is all you think about. It ends up destroying everything around you until you have nothing left. The proof is in our history books and in the news every day. People trying to force religion on them or trying to take over other countries for no reason at all.
In conclusion, this article goes into complete detail on how power can lead you astray if not controlled in the right way. William Fulbright gave several examples of past events and what came out of those proceedings. To leave you with some final words from Fulbright, “We can neither abolish nor totally accept national rivalries; we have got, somehow, to put them under some restraints, just as we have brought the rivalries of business and other groups within our own society under restraints in order to protect the community and, indeed, in order to perpetuate competition, which under conditions of unregulated rivalry would soon enough be ended with the elimination of the small and weak groups by the big and strong ones.” If we can agree to this then America does have a chance at regulating its power and not giving it up to the runner up. We can still have a bright future not just for us but for our future as a nation.

Works Cited
Fulbright, William J. “On the Arrogance of Power, 1966.” Department of Physics: University 3 of Washington Online. n.d. Web. 11 May 2012.