I have been filling in the final gaps in a sweep of US history I mainly worked on in the week leading up to July 4. Here are some of the excerpts I've posted:
This morning I finished chapter 11 on America's expansion in the late 1800s/early 1900s. The more I've worked on this material, the more I'm convinced that there is a mastermind of history in the current administration. I have my own sense of who it might be. Unfortunately, I sense they admire the dark side of US history rather than the truly Christian side. I'm praying that such individuals will lose favor with the president.
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We’re coming for whatever you got.
Progress at Home, Power Abroad
By the dawn of the 20th century, America had cleaned up its living room but started eyeing the neighbors’ houses.
The Progressive Era had arrived. Reformers at home were calling out corruption, monopolies, poisoned food, child labor, and slums. These were journalists, pastors, politicians, teachers. They wanted to fix things. Teddy Roosevelt led the charge with his “Square Deal,” busting trusts and regulating railroads. The government, they argued, could be a force for good. And sometimes, it was.
But while America was busy scrubbing up the inside, it was also kicking down doors outside.
Expansionism wasn’t new. Manifest Destiny had already pushed America westward in the early 1800s. It had swallowed land from Mexico and forced Native peoples off their ancestral homes. But by the late 1800s, America had run out of frontier – at least on the mainland. So, the eyes of Washington and Wall Street turned outward.
In 1898, the U.S. declared war on Spain, supposedly to help Cuba gain independence. The real reason? To prove we had the muscle of an empire. Within months, the U.S. had scooped up Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. That same year, we annexed Hawaii, claiming it was about security and civilization. The sugar plantations told a different story. We backed a coup, overthrew a queen, and called it progress.
A few years later, we took part of Colombia to carve out Panama, building a canal to connect the oceans. We wrapped it all in the language of liberation and progress. But our real motives were clear: land, labor, leverage.
This wasn’t just history. It’s a mindset that never fully left. Apparently, it’s always been there lurking in the minds of some.
In his second term, President Trump has resurrected this conquest mindset. In one of his rallies, he joked about buying Greenland, calling it “prime real estate.” It wasn’t really a joke.
He floated the idea of making Canada the 51st state. The result? A Canadian conservative who had been leading in the polls lost support overnight. Canadians weren’t interested in becoming America’s 51st state.
Trump said we should “take back Panama” – “because we built the canal, didn’t we?” And he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” As he put it, “Why should Mexico get to name it? We’ve earned it.”
Some laughed. Some cheered. But to the rest of the world, it wasn’t funny.
It’s like the same story all over again in a new century. Finders keepers, losers weepers.
The Spanish American Grab
If Manifest Destiny was about claiming the continent, 1898 was about claiming the globe.
The Spanish-American War lasted less than four months, but it changed America’s role in the world forever. The official reason for the war was to help free Cuba from Spanish rule. That’s what the newspapers screamed. It’s what President McKinley told Congress. We wrapped the war in slogans about liberty and democracy.
But wars usually have more than one reason. And the real reasons are often less noble. "The good of the people" was mostly propaganda.
This was about proving America could play empire, just like the old European powers. It was about territory. It was about ports and shipping lanes. It was about sugar and rubber and new markets. We were flexing our new-found muscles. And the world noticed.
When the war ended, the U.S. walked away with prizes: Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. These weren’t accidental acquisitions. They were trophies.
In the Philippines, things turned ugly fast. Filipino revolutionaries had fought alongside the Americans against Spain, thinking they were about to win independence. Instead, they woke up to find out they had traded one colonial power for another.
The U.S. flag went up. The new empire wasn’t Spanish. It was American.
What followed was the Philippine-American War, a brutal conflict that is rarely taught in U.S. history classes. Between 200,000 and 300,000 Filipinos died from combat, famine, and disease. As is often the case, they were mostly civilians. American troops burned villages and tortured prisoners. Some of the same politicians who had spoken about freeing Cuba now spoke about “uplifting” the Philippines, as if democracy could be delivered at the end of a bayonet.
Civilians were rounded up into concentration camps. One general issued orders to kill every male over the age of ten – reminiscent of what Pharaoh did to the Israelites in Exodus. Another general described the war effort as trying to "pacify" a people he called savages. Some liberation.
U.S. officials described the occupation as a civilizing mission. President McKinley claimed God told him to “uplift and civilize and Christianize” the Filipinos. By the way, they were already overwhelmingly Christian – just Catholic. It was colonial arrogance wrapped in missionary language.
Meanwhile, Guam and Puerto Rico became U.S. territories. They are still in limbo today. They’re stuck in that half-American status where you get the rules but not all the rights. Wouldn't it be nice to give them the statehood they deserve?
This is the pattern. “Liberation” as a mask for control, freedom as a brand name for U.S. interest. And when the people we “helped” didn't fall in line, we acted surprised. It was as if freedom was only freedom if it followed our instructions.
It wasn’t just about land. It was about narrative. If we were the good guys, then nothing we did could be imperial. It had to be noble. It had to be generous. It had to be for their own good.
But history is less flattering. We didn’t just plant flags. We planted lies. And we called them liberty.
This was Manifest Destiny internationalized. It was a shift from continental conquest to global ambition. We didn’t just want to be a country anymore. We wanted to be an empire like the big boys. And just like that, the land of liberty got into the empire business.
It goes without saying that none of this is Christ-honoring in any way. It is violence for self-gain. It doesn’t do to others what we would have them do to us. It isn’t love of neighbor or enemy. It is love of self.
Certainly, there have been “Christian” nations who have done such things, nations with state religions that call themselves Christians. Since Constantine in the 300s, there have been many instances where a visible church became fused with the powers of government.
They might have used Christian language. But they weren’t following Jesus. They were following power. These weren’t the actions of the true, invisible church. William McKinley might have used some Christian words. But this had nothing to do with Jesus.
Empire and the Dollar
America’s new empire wasn’t just built with bullets. It was built with business plans.
Behind every military intervention was a profit motive. Sugar, rubber, tobacco, bananas, oil, shipping lanes. These weren’t side benefits of expansion. For many, they were the point. People get conquered. American gets land. Business gets rich. It’s the same playbook Europe used when it came to the New World.
The Philippines became a steppingstone to China, opening up new markets for American goods. Hawaii wasn’t about security. It was about sugar plantations and pineapple companies. Puerto Rico became a hub for American sugar production, with local economies restructured to feed the U.S. market – not their own people of course.
In Panama, we didn’t just want a canal for global commerce. We wanted to control the toll booth. Owning the path between the Atlantic and the Pacific meant we could control trade itself.
It’s no coincidence that President Trump has talked about taking the canal back. From a business perspective, Carter was stupid to give it to the people of Panama. Far too authentically Christian. Didn’t he get the memo that governments are only supposed to use Christian language? They’re not supposed to actually be Christian.
This wasn’t a new idea. “Dollar diplomacy” became the official policy under President William Howard Taft in 1909. Use money, not just military, to expand influence. Set up banks, control debt, install friendly governments that owe you favors. If that didn’t work, send in the Marines.
American companies weren’t just doing business abroad. They were becoming the tentacles of empire. United Fruit Company in Central America. Standard Oil in the Caribbean. American Sugar Refining in Hawaii and Puerto Rico. These corporations shaped foreign policy just as much as presidents did.
We told ourselves we were spreading democracy. But what we really spread was economic dependency. We were making sure that other countries produced what we wanted, bought what we sold, and stayed in line with our rules.
It was conquest by contract.
And just like the military empire, the business empire has never really gone away. We don’t always send troops anymore. We send lobbyists. We send trade negotiators. We send corporations so big that governments bend to their will.
When you control the market, you don’t have to fire a shot. You can just sit back and watch the cash flow in.
Fortress America
While America was expanding its footprint abroad, it was tightening the gates at home. We will explore these dynamics in more detail in the next chapter.
By the early 1900s, the same country that claimed to be spreading freedom overseas was busy closing its borders and purifying its population at home. This wasn’t a contradiction. It was the same story, just in reverse. Conquer abroad, control at home.
The Progressive Era had a dark side. Alongside the food safety laws and labor reforms came eugenics, anti-immigrant hysteria, and “Americanization” campaigns. Eugenics was one of the ugliest undercurrents of the early 20th century. It is the pseudoscience of human breeding. Progressives didn’t just want cleaner streets and safer factories. Many wanted a cleaner gene pool.
State fairs held “fitter family” contests. Universities taught courses on racial hierarchy. Forced sterilization programs targeted thousands of people – the poor, the disabled, immigrants, Black women, Native women, anyone labeled “unfit.” In some states, sterilization was performed without consent, sometimes without the patient even knowing it had happened. We like to tell ourselves this was a European problem. But the truth is that America wrote the first draft of the playbook Hitler would later use.
And the abuses didn’t stop with sterilization. From 1932 to 1972, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment let hundreds of Black men suffer untreated syphilis so government doctors could “study the effects.” The men weren’t told what was happening. They were promised free healthcare. Instead, they became test subjects in a cruel exercise of medical racism. It was the kind of experiment we usually accuse dictatorships of running. But this wasn’t Nazi Germany. This was Alabama.
Immigrants were told to drop their languages, their cultures, even their names. Scientists gave speeches about “racial hygiene.” Politicians warned of "undesirable stock." The goal was simple. Build an empire outside, keep it pure inside.
This wasn’t just about race. It was about fear of dilution. Fear that too many new people would change what America meant. Fear that “real Americans” would lose control.
It’s the same fear Trump has tapped into again in his second term. At the same time that he has talked about expansion abroad – taking back Panama, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, absorbing Canada – he has been building walls at home. People are being sorted into categories: who belongs and who doesn’t. Who’s allowed to stay, and who’s disposable.
This isn’t about safety. It’s about identity. It’s about drawing a line around who counts as an American and who doesn’t. And it’s about keeping that line wherever it serves the empire’s needs, whether it means expanding it for land and labor. Or closing it to keep power in the right hands.
Who do we want to be?America has always had a choice.
We can be the takers. We can be the sugar barons, the canal-grabbers, the men who talk about civilization while cashing checks and counting profits. That’s one version of America. It’s the William McKinley and William Howard Taft version, where expansion is destiny and moral language is just the marketing department of greed.
Or we can be something else.
We did eventually do the right thing for the Philippines. When the Japanese took over the Philippines in World War II, they brutalized both the Filipino people and the captured American soldiers. General MacArthur made a promise: “I shall return.” And he did.
It took decades of control, war, and occupation. But after World War II, we finally did what we had claimed we were doing all along. On July 4, 1946, we recognized Philippine independence. It was late. But it mattered. Doing the right thing, even after failure, is still better than never doing it at all.
We did eventually do the right thing in Panama too. After almost a century of holding the canal as our own personal shortcut, President Carter brokered the deal to hand it back. He was mocked for it. Called weak. But it was the right thing to do.
History has given us this choice over and over again.
Do we want to be the country that talks about liberty while practicing domination? Or do we want to actually live out the words of the Declaration of Independence?
“Let America be America again.” That was Langston Hughes’ plea. And it wasn’t about nostalgia. It was about living up to the promise we keep making but don’t always keep.
It’s not just history. We still make this choice over and over.
Do we want to be a “finders keepers, losers weepers” empire, grabbing land and locking out immigrants? Or do we want to be a nation that does to others what we would have them do to us?
We’re still deciding whether that’s the road we want to stay on. It’s not too late to do the right thing.
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