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?