Manifest Destiny

I thought that Manifest Destiny was a very insightful book. However, after finishing, I wanted to read a postscript from the author written now. It seems to me that events over the last ten years have completely invalidated his claim that a sense of American destiny is in jeopardy. Before the final chapter, I often found myself thinking that really all that was needed for his quotations from the 19th century to be coming from politicians of today was some slight political correcting, and the substitution of "democracy" for "anglo-saxon empire." While our current democracy spreading endeavors are couched in much prettier language with regards to those we are interested in converting, it amounts, in my opinion, to much the same thing. We are now in an age of ideological expansionism as far as the US is concerned.

Outside of that I found several things in the book disturbing, although not necessarily new. Some of the rhetoric Stephanson quoted was disturbingly close to German rhetoric pre-WWII. The section that really stood out to me was on pg. 81; where the "extinction for the inferior races" was referred to as "God's final and complete solution." While the term "final solution" obviously didn't have the same connotations in the 19th century as it does, reading the phrase coming from an American statesman was really disturbing. Also, I found the comparison of American patriotism to a religion, again while not necessarily new, very insightful, especially in light of our current mission of democratization, as well as the puritanical and protestant roots of the concept of manifest destiny