President Roosevelt's Manifest Destiny

Abraham Lincoln once said, “My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth”(Lincoln qtd. in “Abraham”). It is not too late to achieve this dream. The Constitution clearly states in the preamble that the sole purpose of the U.S. government is “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” (U.S Constitution, Preamble). This purpose has been severely muddled since America has taken up the ‘indispensable’ role of policing the world, sometimes overlooking domestic issues that still have not been solved to this day. Without the consideration
One could say that President Roosevelt’s imperialistic* actions of the time in the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico was another step in fulfilling America’s “Manifest Destiny”. The phrase coined by John O’Sullivan defines the belief that America’s purpose is essentially, by divine providence, to spread American values, such as democracy, across the North American continent (O’Sullivan), and later applied to the colonization of developing countries that became American territories. “The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles...” (O’Sullivan 427). This concept predates the phrase as an American ideal, one that gloats, “America is the greatest nation on Earth and everyone should be like us.” The reality of this statement is highly exaggerated. Some people actually believe that America is the single-most ‘indispensable’ force on the planet and that it is the only nation capable of bringing to the table the leadership that the world so desperately needs (Bremmer 28), and they will fight for the necessity
Proud patriots, men and women alike, banded together and fought for a government that would guarantee their rights and representation. When Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal” (Jefferson 1), it was not, at the time, intended to include anyone who was not an entitled white male, and it would be nearly ninety years before African Americans were considered citizens with rights to vote and nearly 144 years before women in America were granted suffrage. It was only about fifty years ago that Civil Rights were granted to African Americans, and there are still battles being fought for Women’s equality today. A survey from Pew Research Center relates that “Barely half in the U.S. (51%) think their government respects individual freedoms today” (Wike). America was founded upon the fundamental rights to equality and freedom, but these things are not as guaranteed as one would