What does manifest destiny have to do with our nation's textbooks?

A lot, apparently.

In his excellent and slender book, Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right, Columbia professor Anders Stephanson traces the idea of American exceptionalism from the Puritans to the cold war.

When the Puritans came to the New World, it was -- they believed -- as the Chosen People. Since the Jews had violated the covenant with God, and then the Catholics, and then the Protestant reformers, the responsibility had fallen to the Puritans to reveal God's truth on earth, and in return he would reward them.

And lo and behold, he did: he gave them America. The New World was incontestable evidence that God favored the Puritans, and to keep their end of the bargain they had only to spread Christian civilization in the form of American democracy around the world. (Sound familiar? Freedom is on the march...)

Confident in their mandate from God, the Puritans and their descendants went about subduing the earth, murdering the Indians, and cornering the free market. If these activities brought pain and suffering, they were nonetheless necessary and not entirely regrettable means to the divine and glorious end of bringing the world to heel, overseeing a thousand years of peace, and ushering in the apocolypse.

How did we know this was our destiny? Clearly, it was manifest in a thousand signs from God: a continent rich with natural resources, small pox to wipe out the Indians (although later Ben Franklin suggested rum would be a more accurate sign), and an economic empire that escaped the fate of the British and Roman empires because it served as an "empire of the seas," dominating the world without the unpleasant side effect of having to absorb other races into the citizenry.

So, in addition to being a disturbing insight into the American psyche, what does the still very evident assumption of American exceptionalism reveal about the current moment?

For one thing, it sheds some light on all the bruhaha around evolution and intelligent design. I have to admit, this debate has mystified me -- not for its content, but for the urgency with which intelligent design proponents insist that the public accept as fact what has always seemed to me a matter of faith. In response, evolutionists have sputtered about science and secularism, perceiving a threat to the Age of Reason.

But, considering the debate in the context of manifest destiny, I would argue that something even greater is at stake. If intelligent design proponants manage to get their teaching into the textbooks, even alongside evolution, the destinarian mindset will have won, and children will learn that history is not random, but a series of carefully placed steps leading to an inherently good end. Intelligent design affirms that people get what they deserve, what is is what ought, and injustice can be safely ignored.

And what if the evolutionists win? Stripped of the myth of a logical purpose to history, how could we justify policies that amount to killing others so we may live as we please? How could we say, even today, our soldiers do not die in vain? How could any of us, not the least our president, continue to sleep soundly at night, lulled by the logic that America is strong because it is blessed, and blessed because it is strong?

If you haven' t read The Grapes of Wrath recently, stop what you're doing and dig up a copy right now.

For one thing, it's much funnier than it was in tenth grade English; it's also pretty dirty. I don't know how that escaped me.

And, on the off moments when the preacher isn't lusting after farmers' daughters, it manages to offer a pretty radical critique of our very own Ownership Society.

Steinbeck writes,

"And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away.

And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need.

And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.

The great owners ignored the three cries of history ... and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression.

The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmurings of revolt so that it might be stamped out.

The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on."

Ai yi yi. Gas, spies, revolt... Reading Steinbeck this week feels not so much like a history lesson as an analysis of the current news and possibly a foreshadowing of what more is to come.

What to take from this great American novel? One is simply the feeling of dread; my brother holds a personal grudge against Steinbeck because he says that no one who writes so vividly should be allowed to tell such bleak stories.

Another is a feeling of hope. Steinbeck makes a pretty clear case for collective action, making an unapologetic case for unions and the power of the multitude.

(But, if you find youself on the side of the "haves," be warned: "the quality of owning freezes you forever into 'I,' and cuts you off forever from the 'we.'")

Another is a feeling of resignation. When the balance of power is out of whack -- as I believe it is today, both internationally and nationally -- history shows that time always pushes things back toward the center, and we who have enjoyed being on the winning end of things can expect to be rocked pretty hard.

And finally is a feeling of eager anticipation. Things change. This fight that the Bush administration seems to be waging -- quite literally -- to preserve "the American way of life" is not only so full of hubris as to make me actually believe in the Rapture myself because that kind of arrogance is just begging for a big ball of fire, but also futile.

I'm not saying things are necessarily going to get better -- it didn't for the poor Joads, hauling their entire lives from the dust-dried Oklahoma to the perverted look-but-don't-touch Eden of California. Just that they will be different, and rather than fight it, like the foolish owners in Steinbeck's morality tale, we might as well lean into it and adapt with some kind of integrity.

I'm just returning from a fantastic speech by Jonathan Kozol, who is on tour talking about his new book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.

Kozol does for education policy what Oliver Sachs does for medicine: he breathes life into statistics and jargon. Kozol shows what it means to be in a crowded classroom with no money, how the cafeteria smells, the dilemma of the principal who is trying to keep what little funding she has but hating putting teachers through the regulations No Child Left Behind demands.

I've read two of his previous books, Amazing Grace and Savage
Inequalities, and Kozol is satisfying to me not only because he's talking about the work that I do and the politics I loathe; what I especially love about him is that he uses moral language. In the eyes of God, he says, all children are equal, but in the eyes of America, some children are valuable, and some children are cheap.   Read More »