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May
Manifest Destiny—the Promised Land is
Everywhere
The Bible Said So...
The biblical account of the Exodus was an
important part of the mindset of Protestant
religious refugees and of many early settlers from
Europe to the colonies of North America. This
seminal story told of the escape of the Hebrews
from slavery in pharaoh’s Egypt, across the
sea, and through the wilderness to the
“promised land” of Canaan. Religious
refugees saw a direct parallel in their persecution
in Europe (their Egypt), in making the dangerous
passage across the Atlantic (Red Sea), and in their
need to carve a place for themselves out of the
wilderness of the New World.
Following the biblical images they saw
themselves as the righteous few, the inheritors, by
divine promise, of a “land flowing with milk
and honey,” that was to belong to themselves
and their descendants forever. Explicit in the
bible was a God-given mandate to waste the native
inhabitants of the land (Canaanites): “But of
the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God
doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save
alive nothing that breatheth, but thou shalt
utterly destroy them…”
Though the Promised Land was a vision of finding
a peaceful and prosperous place to live, and though
the image itself may have lost its conscious
religious relevance for many, it seems to have
become a permanent fixture of the US cultural
mentality, not for peace but for its value in
undergirding a boundless sense of entitlement.
From Sea to Shining Sea and Beyond
This sense of entitlement has other roots as
well. It certainly borrows from the expansionist
and colonialist tendencies of European nations
whose political, religious, and economic
competition divided up the New World.
Following the success against the British in the
War of 1812, many in the US were free to expand
their dream of a promised land that stretched from
“sea to shining sea” and beyond. The
Monroe Doctrine in 1823 was a shot across the bow
of Europe, a clear statement that the USA saw the
entire hemisphere as its own and would brook no
challenges to its hegemony.
Aggressive wars led to the defeat and siezure of
Spanish colonies and the occupation and siezure of
Texas and California, at which time the term
“Manifest Destiny” became a popular way
to describe this growing sense of national
entitlement to territorial expansion. Thousands
shouted “Westward ho!” and trailed across
the continent to take possession of what they saw
as their natural due.
Manifest Destiny did not end when the shores of
the continent were reached. It went international.
Alaska was purchased from the Russians and
Hawai’i was siezed from its native owners.
Theodore Roosevelt expanded the Monroe Doctrine to
the defense of US business in the hemisphere and
reserved for the US the right to intervene in
contracts that European nations might make with
those in the hemisphere. Challenged US interests
became the often used excuse for sending in the
marines whose “defensive” force had
already been deployed “from the halls of
Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.” It is
interesting to observe that currently USMC
histories are being rewritten as “wars against
terrorism.”
Yellow Press and Yellow Art
Selective and exaggerated coverage of
Cuba’s conflict with Spain in 1895-98 brought
US media into the service of Manifest Destiny.
Newspapers competing for readership stoked US
emotions much like the Fox News news anchors and
reporters do at present. They made US citizens
ready for the “inevitable” war that
President McKinley decided to wage on Spain in
1898. Correspondents not only sent daily reports
but joined in the shooting.
Artist Frederic Remington was assigned the task
of drawing inflammatory images for the Hearst
newspapers and when he could find none was
reputedly told by William R.Hearst, “You
furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."
British poet Rudyard Kipling, part time US
resident, encouraged the US to to take the lead set
by British colonialism and share the “White
Man’s Burden” of helping the world’s
inferior races to Christianity. He is echoed in the
now secular version of “making the world safe
for (our) democracy.”
Moral Superiority
This historical background makes what is
occuring in the Middle East today less than
surprising, as it taps into one of the important
“bellicose veins” of our cultural
consciousness. George W. Bush was not the first to
claim US moral superiority as a reason for
premptive action against those peoples and
governments seen as less moral.
Though the racial tones are no longer as
explicit, Bush and Rumsfeld, in fact, echo Albert
T. Beveridge, the Senator from Indiana, who
remarked close to the turn of the century:
“God has not been preparing the
English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a
thousand years for nothing but vain and idle
self-admiration. No! He has made us the master
organizers of the world to establish system where
chaos reigns... that we may administer government
among savages and senile peoples.
Manifest Destiny was not without resisters then
as now. In a 1837 letter to Henry Clay, William E.
Channing, a founder of Unitarianism, wrote:
“It is sometimes said, that nations are swayed
by laws, as unfailing as those which govern matter;
that they have their destinies; that their
character and position carry them forward
irresistibly to their goal; ... the Indians have
melted before the white man, and the mixed,
degraded race of Mexico must melt before the
Anglo-Saxon. Away with this vile sophistry! There
is no necessity for crime.”
Ceaseless Warfare
George W. Bush has promised us an endless war on
terror. History tells us we should believe him. US
attempts to take possession of the Philippine
islands resulted in the first Vietnam type conflict
to divide US public sentiment. US treachery in
abrogating its treaty with Filipino Muslims by
invading their territory in 1903 was a direct cause
of the continuing stuggles in the Philippine
Republic that still involve US personnel today, a
century later. In 1906 US troops massacred 900
Muslim Filipinos, men, women and children, at Bud
Dajo trapping them in a volcanic crater and firing
at them from the rim until all were
exterminated.
Such atrocities continued despite Theodore
Roosevelt’s attempt to declare the war over.
Mark Twain might have been writing directly to the
White House of the 70’s and perhaps predicting
our future in the Middle East when he remarked,
"…we have got into a mess, a quagmire from
which each fresh step renders the difficulty of
extrication immensely greater." The Philippine
massacre was repeated at Bud Bagsak in
1913…and, of course, at Mi Lai in Vietnam
again in 1968. At this moment in time, Harvard
philosopher George Santayana’s words, too
often cited, still ring very true, “Those who
do not remember the past are condemned to repeat
it.”
Unfortunately, we have too few journalists today
like Mark Twain who might remind presidents and
people of the truth of our situation then as now:
"To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on
saying, 'Our Country, right or wrong,' and urge on
the little war. Have you not perceived that that
phrase is an insult to the nation?" And from the
other side of the Atlantic Mr. Blair might listen
to G.K. Chesterton’s echo of the same quote,
“'My country, right or wrong' is a thing that
no patriot would think of saying except in a
desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk
or sober.'"
© 2008 George
Simons
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There are no elements so diverse that they cannot
be joined in the heart of a man. - Jean
Giraudoux
George Simons
is a US specialist in intercultural and gender
communication who hangs out in Mandelieu - la
Napoule, France, as well as in Santa Cruz, CA. In
the 1980’s he was one of the founders of the
Hidden Valley Center for Men and the Cyberguys
network. He is currently the treasurer on the board
of The National Men's Resource Center™. He is
on the faculty of Management Centre Europe, where
he consults on virtual global teamwork. He has
written over a dozen books on culture and gender
including Working
Together: How to Become More Effective
in a Multicultural
Organization and
with Deborah G. Weissman, Men
& Women: Partners at
Work. (Crisp
Foundation) and is the creator of the award-winning
Diversophy® game. www.diversophy.com
or E-Mail.
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