Manifest Destiny is a concept that hasn’t been explicitly invoked by an American president in a very long time. It’s the idea that Americans have a divine mandate to conquer, to expand, to reach out across vast expanses. If James Polk hadn’t embraced Manifest Destiny in the middle of the 19th century, there’s a very good chance that America wouldn’t look anything like what it does today. We wouldn’t have states like California, Utah, Oregon, Washington and many more. Our country never would have gained access to the Pacific. We would have established no foothold west of the Mississippi at all. Foreign powers would have retained control over wide swaths of the North American continent. We would be a much smaller, much weaker nation today. So small and weak that, by now, we may not even be a nation at all.
We wouldn’t have experienced the unprecedented economic and technological growth that we did in the 19th and 20th centuries — growth that ensured America would become the world’s greatest superpower. As part of our journey to the West, we developed everything from new farming techniques to the telegraph system to the transcontinental railroad. This was a period of extraordinary expansion in every sense, made possible by Americans’ belief in God and His will and His calling on our lives. And yet, until yesterday, no modern American president wanted to talk about it. Manifest Destiny has somehow become a point of embarrassment. The pioneer spirit was extinguished, in favor of a spirit of weakness and shame.
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