Were they being ethnocentric? Were they cultural imperialists? Their answer, after some debate, was: in the modern world it had become both appropriate and necessary to affirm that “laws of political morality are universal”—a phrase that eventually was incorporated into the preamble to the constitution. To the more specific question of whether it was wise and feasible to try to impose such liberal ideas upon Japan, the answer was that the government, not the people, was resisting such change. If the people did not like what the Americans were proposing, they could always change it later.62
