Manifest destiny

[[File:American progress.JPG|thumb|right|200px|The clouds moving away is just an indicator for the upcoming severe droughts and eventually the {{wpl|Dust Bowl}} as punishment for committing [[American Indian Genocide|genocide]] and making cringey paintings.]]
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{{imperialism}} 
{{cquote|[...] only a really low-IQ population could have taken this beautiful continent, this magnificent American landscape that we inherited...<b>well, actually, we stole it from the Mexicans and the Indians but, hey, it was nice when we stole it! It looked pretty good. It was pristine. Paradise.</b> Have you seen it lately? Have you taken a good look at it lately? It’s fucking embarrassing. Only a nation of unenlightened half-wits could have taken this beautiful place and turned it into what it is today: a shopping mall.|||[[George Carlin]] in his 2005 HBO Special, <i>Life is Worth Losing</i>}}
{{cquote|This is a show [Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Rough Riders of the World] about the conquest of the West, but everything that the audience sees is Indians attacking whites. <b>It's a strange story of an inverted conquest... a celebration of conquest in which the conquerors are the victims. And there's something... deeply weird about this.... It's conquest won without the guilt. We didn't plan it; they attacked us, and when we ended up, we had the whole continent.</b>|||Historian Richard White in the 1996 documentary <i>The West</i> by Ken Burns and Stephen Ives<ref>https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_West_(film)#Episode_7:_The_Geography_of_Hope_(1877_to_1887)</ref>}}

'''Manifest destiny''' is (or was, due to its far greater prevalence in the 19<sup>th</sup> century) the idea that the [[United States]] had the inherent [[rights|right]] to expand all the way to the Pacific Ocean.  The hyperbole was hardly unique to the US in its [[British Empire|contemporary setting]], but it does form an important component part of the doctrine of [[American exceptionalism]]. The allure of so-called "virgin soil,"<ref group=note>This implies that the land was unpopulated. In a sense it was, as those [[Native Americans|heathens]] can hardly qualify as human beings, can they? (Also, substantial depopulation occurred ''ahead'' of the settlers' advance, as Indian communities suffered from [[disease]]s they had no immunity to.)</ref> which acted as a spur for a diverse collection of eccentrics, [[religious fundamentalist]]s, speculators and [[aristocratic]] chancers in the 17th and 18th centuries, was the necessary precursor to manifest destiny.

The 19th century [[historian]] Frederick Jackson Turner established the Frontier Thesis in ''The Significance of the Frontier in American History'', which essentially argued that the experience of the frontier created an American [[mythology]] - thus in turn creating the conception of American [[nation]]hood, which had been closely tied to continental models during its [[American Revolution|War of Independence]]. The only [[historian]]-come-President, [[Theodore Roosevelt]], wrote that the frontier created an "[[Scientific racism|American Race]]." Manifest destiny not only greatly increased the landmass of the American [[republic]], it effectively created the American ideal. Without it, the United States would have been vastly different — whether would have been for better or for worse is a matter of opinion.

Seeing such historical processes in isolation may lead to a [[Americentrism|critical failure of perspective]]. The American expansion across central continental North America is comparable in scale to the [[British]]/[[Canadian]] expansion across northern continental [[North America]], the [[Argentina|Argentine]] and [[Chile]]an [[Conquest of the Desert|conquest of Patagonia]], the British/[[Australia]]n colonization of the interior of Australia, [[Russia]]n colonization of Siberia and Central Asia, [[Japan]]ese colonization of Hokkaido and Ryukyu, [[German Empire|Imperial German]] colonization of Namibia, and [[China|Chinese]] expansion in [[Tibet]], [[Xinjiang]], and [[Taiwan]]. Expansion is how large territorial states are created. Unable to accomplish a comparable expansion on a cute little collection of [[British Isles|home islands]] with a total land mass no larger than the state of [[Oregon]], Britain added vast territories in Asia and Africa to its empire. [[France]] did the same thing, although most of its vast territories were far less densely populated.

==What next?==
The eternal, absolute, [[God]]-given right to private property dates back to... just after all the original inhabitants [[Irony|were put on their reservations]].

After the US expanded all the way to [[California]] and all along the West Coast, the frontier was officially closed and there was some debate over what to do next. The solution was to become an [[imperialist]] power, which the US did in the 1890s, attempting to seize land in the Pacific and [[Monroe Doctrine|dominate Latin American affairs]].

It's possible that the idea behind manifest destiny was used to justify the expansion of [[Germany]] which kicked off the [[Second World War]].<ref>[https://www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_1093304 Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian wars: comparing genocide and conquest], Edward B. Westermann, ''Smithsonian'' 2016</ref> However, it is likely that this completely bastardized the work of German geographer Friedrich Ratzel, who studied the effect of people of Germanic origin on the development of the US in the 19th Century.{{cn}}

==See also==
*[[Lebensraum]]
*[[Irredentism]]
* [[Zionism]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Crimes against humanity]]
[[Category:Imperialism]]
[[Category:Racism]]
[[Category:Nationalist pseudohistory]]
[[Category:United States history]]
[[Category:United States politics]]

Categories: Crimes against humanity, Imperialism, Racism, Nationalist pseudohistory, United States history, United States politics