It's true that most (all?) mainstream discourse ignores the Manifest Destiny mantra that's so deeply ingrained in the white-powerful-people psyche. Maybe no one explicitly says these days that we're entitled to the oil in Iraq; it doesn't even need to be said. It's just known. I was talking about this idea a few months ago with a couple of Chilean friends, in a much more innocent context, that being of sports. They were reliving the glorious moment when Chile won its first Olympic gold medal in the 2004 summer games, thanks to tennis player (y mino...¡guau!) Fernando Gonzales. I realized in that moment that for me, as a United Statsean, Olympic gold medals are expected. We are disappointed and upset when we don't win something, we feel entitled...naturally we should win every event, Americans are the best! It's not even a question of deserving, it's just accepted as how we are: dominant. The question of athletics is obviously dramatically less important than the abusive injustice of land or resource grabs, but to me they're both on a continuum illustrating the same point. It's a mentality that we have to lose if we're ever going to see the rest of the world as the real live living breathing equals that they so obviously are.

Such Imperial chauvinism (to use a french term, that'll annoy 'em) is breathtaking. It's also one of the answers to why the US is now so openly hated. Hubris to the power of infinity.

Ah, yes, all those indigenous "regimes" that were running the US before it was colonized...Hmm. It's not like folks were self-sufficient, or less hierarchical, or anything. Capitalism will set you free!

Not to mention the fact that the people of Hawaii certainly weren't better off before Cook landed there and stole the land. They were under some sort of crazy, equitable, not-having-to-live-by-serving-white-rich-american-tourism regime.

Suss, right. I don't think our present goal is to be accepted as an equal at all, ever. I think the program is to colonize the entire world. (Excuse me, "defend every one of our global interests.") The uncertainty is only whether we can get away with it. That's what makes protest here in the USA so important. It's the first line of defense.

What's bizarre is that the article is so openly sinister. Those cities that surrender to us have lived as slaves; those who resist, died. It's like an email from a Roman emperor.

Ahhhhh...eeee-yah.

I suppose that the asshats in the New York Sun who busted out that turd of an editorial probably would also agree that Blacks were much better off under the progressive regimes of Southern slavery and Jim Crow than they ever were in the "ancien regime" of their former countries in Africa, too. But since they don't appreciate all the freedom that "we" grant them, "we" are justified in lynching, beating, and otherwise murdering them....all in the name of "freedom" and "democracy", no doubt.

White Man's Burden -- such a lovely....burden. Arrrrrrrggggghhhh.

Anthony

They left out the Sam Houston quote about why we had to do it, namely, "the Mexicans are no better than the Indians ...."

I'm afraid my local paper took the selective lobotomy route to honoring the wars as the best way of honoring the dead. They listed three centuries of really kewl battles that greatly inflated freedom everywhere. But forgot to mention the invasion of Florida, the invasion of Mexico, the invasion of Puerto Rico and the Phillipines. Hell, not even Canyon de Chelly. Somehow, the War of 1812, one of the rare occasions when the U.S. government was actually just defending itself didn't make the list! All that running away at Bladensburg and the White House in flames and all, I suppose.