The question raised in class of whether we can envision the U.S. without manifest destiny is interesting, but very difficult to answer. As Stephenson's work is trying to show us manifest destiny has been the guideing ideology for U.S. politics since "Plymouth Rock". Those of us who are not Christian and believe that manifest destiny is an ideology that has led to some of the most embarassing events in the history of the U.S. (slavery, killing Native Americans, "extending freedom" to the world) have a very hard time accepting that manifest destiny has, in fact, been a guiding force since the first settelers. I know that in the past (even in my last blog post) I have tried to gloss over the strong role of Christianity in our society because it is one that I do not necessarily believe is positive. Before class on Thursday I wanted to bash manifest destiny as an ideology and pretend like it could be removed from our history. However, after the class discussion I realized that it is almost impossible, even in a thought experiment, to remove manifest destiny and Christianity from the U.S. and consider what would have happened.

There was a basic consensus in class that the U.S. would certainly be a smaller country without manifest destiny because there would have been less motivation to move west (especially across the Mississippi River). I think that manifest destiny was an ideology that worked well with democracy. The ideology allowed the people and the government to all feel that expansion was the morally right thing to do. However, it seems as if the same expansion may have ocurred (without manifest destiny) if the new colonies had been ruled by a dictator or strong authoritarian regime instead of by a democratic government. A power-hungry leader may have decided that expanding westward was the best way to gain power. After considering that a dictator may have been able to create the U.S. in the same way that our democratic government expanded west, I wonder if our democracy could have achieved what it did without an ideology such as manifest destiny. It seems that the only way a democratic government could convince a population that westward expansion was positive would be if the government convinced the people it was their destiny (or in this case "manifest destiny").