Visions of the Past, Courtesy of Stephanson

I had to change my usual title this week, because we aren't exactly dealing with science fiction or the future, but our history. So maybe I should have called it America: Reinterpreted, or something. Or something witty from the Complete History of America (abridged) that Tim and I went to (albeit coincidentally at the same time). But I didn't.
Instead of focusing on themes this time around, I think I'll point out some things I found interesting. Or maybe just one theme.
Religion. I've thought a bit about it, being person who goes to church on a weekly basis and is fairly active in my community, but I didn't really make all the connections Stephanson did. I mean, I caught the bit about the Puritans using religion as a reason for doing stuff and the whole city on a hill thing, but I'm not sure I connected Manifest Destiny itself to religion. I just connected it to "hey, we're here and no one else is so all of this should be ours anyway and not yours. Or yours. Or that guy's over there. So back off." Oops. But I see it now, and I think Stephanson makes a lot of sense.
Okay, now to interesting bits.
Pg. 17-18: Pointing to Madison for turning the vastness quandary around to a good thing and the Jackson era for making expansion a necessity. I bet the European powers used this same argument a bit later on/around the same time for the whole imperialism/colonialism thing with adding the idea that they've done pretty well so far so everyone should follow their model of doing things and the best way to do that is by becoming part of them. Eventually this turned from exerting real control into an umbrella or spheres of influence once they got over the whole control thing. But we beat them to that too: the Monroe Doctrine.
Pg. 23: The Louisiana Purchase and buying the land becoming the proper way of expanding. I liked the part about how we'd insist on paying something even when we'd gotten it fair and square in a war, like most other countries do it. Aren't we nice? Also, we seem to have dropped the ball on the whole Cuba thing very early in the game and have yet to recover from it.
Pg. 36-37: The whole Santa Anna/setting up the Mexican American War. I didn't know that about that war, that Polk sort of made it happen. Not something we covered in AP US History...I think. No, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, this is why you don't try to trick the country into going along with something by using members of foreign governments, they usually try to renege on the deal to do better for themselves like Santa Anna rallying his country. You'd think he'd be in such awe of the power of America he wouldn't dare cross it. Go figure.
Pg. 55: Phrenology and blacks "fading away" as a race. First off, let me say I've always found phrenology hilarious. That respectable (although an argument could be made that by believing in this they could hardly be so) scientists believed that measuring the skull and interpreting the bumps led to insights into character. Not exactly an exact science, like astrology. Second, the idea that a race could fade away just by wishing or deciding it would happen is ludicrous. Look at the Native Americans, they tried pretty hard to wipe them out and it didn't work then either. Nor should it. Diversity is good. Like Stephanson said earlier on in the book, a multitude of groups prevents one from taking over and keeps people on their toes.
Pg. 65: Civil War revitalizing confidence in the American mission. In my American Philosophy class we discussed how James, Peirce, and Dewey (nicely mentioned on pg. 83) likened America to an experiment, with the Civil War proving that America was nice and strong idea-wise, it just got shaken up a bit by the whole slavery/North-South debacle. Since none of them were really gung-ho on religion, though they accepted it, we didn't talk about the religious context but it certainly makes sense for Northern ministers to spin the war as a divine thing and those pesky Southerners were trying to ruin the chosen land. If a war's not about religion in the first place, it'll certainly come in as being on our side and not their's, no matter the side.
Pg. 82: Social-Darwinism and how it's not really Darwinian. True. Darwin was hardly the first evolutionary theorist (and I should know, this philosophy class had us research ideas prior to Darwin to give context to the pragmatists and how evolutionary theory influenced their thinking, turns out it did- a lot) and he sort of cobbled everything together without the whole religion thing that people like Comte de Buffon had to deal with. But Darwin did have the natural selection thing and anything open-ended tends to scare people so Darwin gets the blame. At least we know who he was, the other guys weren't so lucky, or were depending on how you look at it. But who wants to call it Social-Spencerism? The alliteration's a bit much.
Pg. 115-117: Wilson and the League of Nations. I feel sort of bad for Wilson. He put all that effort into the League only to have America let him down and thus let down the rest of the world. Now, if America had been as responsive as Wilson would have liked to the idea would World War 2 still have happened? Good question but most likely. The mistakes made regarding Germany would still have happened, especially since Germany didn't qualify for the League.

Altogether I liked this book and look forward to our discussion on Tuesday. And yes, I was feeling a bit snarky as I wrote this.