Don't know much about history...

You know, I could really learn to enjoy American history. For example: NPR this morning ran a story about the drought in Atlanta. Turns out it isn't much of a drought at all, at least not in terms of abnormally low rainfall. No, it's a question of water usage. It's a question of development. It's a question of too many people and other interests with too many straws sucking out of the same reservoir. So the problem is people, not nature. Hmmmm...back to the question of will. Somehow I don't think that's going to be a popular diagnosis. Now, why would I think that?

Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.

John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

And this destiny didn't just come from God. It's the natural order of things:

Texas has been absorbed into the Union as the inevitable fulfillment of the general law which is rolling our population westward....It was disintegrated from Mexico in the natural course of events, by a process perfectly legitimate on its own part, blameless on ours....

California will, probably next fall away from...Mexico...imbecile and distracted...The Anglo-Saxon foot is already on its borders....All this without agency of our government, without responsibility of our people--in the natural flow of events, the spontaneous working of principles....

Democratic Review, 1845

If you listen carefully, you can hear the geist of Hegel whistling between those lines.

And for those of you who say the present Administration is the greatest embarassment and moral horror in the history of this country, well, as the French say: plus ce change, plus ce la meme chose.

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also.

Henry David Thoreau

And as for our proclivity to war, it's funny how the same arguments keep getting made again and again and again. Change "Mexico" to "Iraq," and this argument could come from William Kristol or anyone on Fox News:

Now we ask, whether any man can coolly contemplate the idea of recalling our troops from the [Mexican] territory we at present occupy...and...resign this beautiful country to the custody of the ignorant cowards and profligate ruffians who have ruled it for the last twenty-five years? Why humanity cries out against it. Civilization and Christianity protest against this reflux of the tide of barbarism and anarchy.

New York Evening Post, 1848