Visions of America
Since the beginning, U.S. international relations have had the intensity of a crusade. To explain this, one must explore the set of beliefs generally shared by the nation's leaders and...
...To explain this, one must explore the set of beliefs generally shared by the nation's leaders and the foreign policy establishment about the nature of the United States of America...
...Henry Stuart Foote, 1851.13 "Our form of government is adapted to civilized man everywhere...
...Ibid...
...leaders from serious moral reflection about the consequences of their actions...
...It is our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federative self-government entrusted to us...
...leaders with the zeal of missionaries...
...Ibid., p. 144...
...9 Such beliefs imbued U.S...
...7. John L. O' Sullivan in the New York Morning News, December 27, 1845, quoted in William Appleman Williams, America Confronts a Revolutionary World: 1776-1976, p. 35...
...Ibid., p. 92...
...William Appleman Williams, America Confronts a Revolutionary World: 1776-1976, p. 178...
...As early as 1816, Kentucky Senator Henry Clay was looking beyond the continental United States: "It is in our power to create a system of which we shall be in the center and in which all South America will act with us...
...Ibid...
...2 3 Professor Williams continues, "Our rulers -are unable to disengage from even the most obvious mistakes in foreign policy with any intelligence and morality, or grace and dignity, and they continue to pout and whine about (and intervene in the affairs of) most of the people with whom we share the globe...
...Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter and abolish it and to institute new government . . When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security...
...8 Wilson would express the quintessence of America's mission-self-importance and crusading zeal, all supremely mindful of the material basis for America's prosperity: "Our industries have expanded to such a point that they will burst theirjackets if they cannot find a free outlet to the markets of the world...
...policy in Central America is a tragic reflection of that obsession with the Evil Other-tragic and ironic, because it betrays our own origins...
...Their myths have become our myths, their vision our vision...
...Ibid., p. 25...
...6 This cherished belief in moral superiority has, at critical moments, absolved U.S...
...For white males with property the guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the opportunity for self-government offered a new beginning...
...To his secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, the goals of U.S...
...5. Ibid., p. 44...
...retell and embellish the grisly truth about Iran and Guatemala, Indonesia and Santo Domingo, Italy and Cuba, Vietnam and Watergate...
...Two centuries later, President Reagan sounded a characteristic note: "We are freer than any other people...
...We have the power," said Thomas Paine, "to begin the world again...
...4. Ibid., p. 25...
...I want the world...
...Josiah Story, 1885.16 "I am an exporter...
...1 0 As the young nation prospered, imperial intentions grew more explicit: "[Our system] will fit a larger empire than ever yet existed, and I have long believed that such an empire will rise in America, and give quiet to the world," dedared Matthew Lyon, a congressman from Vermont and Kentucky, in 1816.11 Give quiet to the world...Quite rapidly, America's expansion became a mission civilitrice...
...The control of our foreign policy by a small and essentially unaccountable elite, which also controls our domestic political economy, survives, he complains, "through inertia and even more because no vital alternative has been proposed and agitated...
...Soon after, in the face of revolution in Mexico and Russia, Woodrow Wilson declared that such disorders needlessly disrupted civilized society...
...Ibid., p. 139...
...Ignatius Donnelly, 1868.14 "If nobody can lick us, we need not be afraid to play the just and generous big brother among the nations...
...2 2 U.S...
...2 0 "The world must be made safe for democracy...
...From the earliest days, this country's leaders saw it as a unique society, an example to the rest of the world...
...Henry Demarest Lloyd, c. 1885.15 "The world is to be Christianized and civilized...
...And Chile...
...Quoted in William Appleman Williams, America Confronts a Revolutionary World: 1776-1976, (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1976), p. 33...
...right to police the Western Hemisphere...
...Our own history speaks mournfully to that double standard...
...9 "I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men...
...3 Those principles have inspired other Americans as well as people throughout the world to demand their universal application...
...leaders have repeatedly justified expansionism as being opposed to some Evil Other-be it the Red Indian, German Kaiserism or Mexican revolutionaries...
...In deep and quiet anger I weep for mine...
...HOLLAND, CHICACO TRIBUNE U.S...
...Of the post-war world, he observes: "My citizen's soul is weary under the burden of my knowledge of my country dishonoring its once noble commitment to the right of self-determination...
...8. Quoted in William Appleman Williams, America Confronts a Revolutionary World: 1776-1976, p. 36...
...The American Revolution and the formation of the United States of America stood for a new principle in the history of nation-states: the right of a people to selfdetermination...
...Quoted in William Appleman Williams, Empire as a Way of Life, (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 193...
...This was the era of the famous Roosevelt Corollary, asserting the 32 NACLA ReportNov/Dec 1983 WHY NOT GET THE BREEDING GROUND...
...Men and women "were endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights...
...Ibid., p. 125...
...that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...
...2. Quoted in William Appleman Williams, America Confronts a Revolutionary World: 1776-1976, p. 108...
...God has predestined.., the rest of the nations must be in our rear...
...AJll of those representatives from all over the world...
...Ibid...
...And yet, as William Appleman Williams argues in his book America Confronts a Revolutionary World, 1776-1976, the quest for empire has overwhelmed this fundamental principle...
...here to look at our election to learn how they could spread the word about that kind of freedom in their own countries...
...The time is long overdue for us to make our own decisions, find our own myths, create our own vision of America...
...3. Ibid., p. 30...
...Even at its birth the leaders of the United States understood that their experiment was a profound break with the political philosophy and principles of the European monarchies...
...Jefferson trembled for his country...
...Let us, then, while perfecting our institutions, not refuse to expand our boundaries...
...VISIONS OF AMERICA 1. FromJefferson's first inaugural address...
...foreign policy were "to prevent revolutions, promote education and advance stable and just governments...
...Ibid., p. 59...
...We have achieved 3 891c eD/noN 31 5"2NALA Rmnort more than any other people...
...How total the commitment of the Declaration of Independence: "it is their duty...
...7 Filling the continent from coast to coast, White European Americans drove Red Americans before them, enslaved African Americans to tend their plantations, forced Spanish Americans to surrender their land, imported Oriental Americans to construct their railroads and exploited Irish, German, Italian and Polish Americans to build their factories...
...Ibid., p. 120...
...Spreading the good news meant territorial expansion, and evenJefferson, who ardently professed the virtues of smallness, recognized that the nation's ultimate aspirations were imperial: "I am persuaded," he wrote in 1809, "that no constitution was ever before as well-calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government...
...John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony described it with characteristic hyperbole: " Men shall say of succeeding plantaclones: the Lord make it like that of New England: for we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon the Hill, the eies of all people upon us.', 4 Americans had, the story goes, not only an exceptional moral character but also special insight into the mysteries of self-government...
...William H. Crawford, New York Times, December 22, 1963 By the infant years of the new century, the United States had become a first-rank industrial power with a modern navy and the ability to realize its territorial ambitions...
...These beliefs operate like myths: they enhance the importance of the nation's actions and justify them by reference to a larger philosophical and moral framework...
...For there we purposely destroyed a man who was dedicated to making a peaceful transition to the Future...
...In his novel White Jacket, Herman Melville wrote, "We Americans are the peculiar, the chosen people-the Israel of our time...
...Charles L. Lovering, textile manufacturer, 1890.17 The Class Will Please Come to Order-Somebody...
...Ibid., p. 120...
...I presume that there are not to be found five men in Europe who understand the nature of liberty and the theory of government as they are understood by five hundred men in America," said Joel Barlow, a New England chaplain, lawyer and entrepreneur in 1788.5 With that understanding came a mission to enlighten the rest of the world...
...Ibid., p. 123...
...8 Thomas Jefferson, indeed, proposed that the Seal of the United States should bear the image of the Children of Israel being led by a shaft of light...
...we bear the ark of the liberties of the world...
...Perhaps most of all Chile...
...Sen...
...Today of course, it is the Soviet Union...
...Ibid., p. 193...
...2 ' By 1961, John F. Kennedy could say without fear of exaggeration, "Our frontiers today are on every continent...
...6. The New York Times, November 11, 1982...
...2 4 Central America again reminds us of how we have yet to find alternatives to the worldview of this elite, its designation of who are our friends and who our enemies...
...12 There was at least a refreshing frankness to imperial rhetoric in the 19th century: "Those who are not for us are against us...
...I leave it to others to...
...9. Ibid., p. 34...
...Who shall say where it shall end...
Vol. 17 • November 1983 • No. 6
