Does the belief in Manifest Destiny still exist among Americans today?

Manifest Destiny, as a feeling of divine obligation to spread from “sea to shining sea”, built slowly over our history. Each generation demanded more and more territory. America purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1904, making it the largest land purchase between two countries in the world’s history. From there, America gained more land from England and purchased or annexed land from Mexico. In the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, the United States paid $10 million for a 29,670 square mile portion of Mexico that would become the states of Arizona and New Mexico. Along the way, America’s government made it clear that Native Peoples’s sovereignty was less important than the dominant group’s own “American Dream” and nationalist expansion.

Although we may think that Americans no longer adhere to this antiquated notion, it is clear that we still hold onto this historic sentiment in our national mission, government structure, and focus on American security. America’s idea of Manifest Destiny was always grounded in our belief in enlightenment thought, like John Locke, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. These philosophers’s ideas are embedded in our constitution. For example, John Locke thought that people were born with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and property. Montesquieu believed in separation of powers and checks and balances. Lastly, Voltaire developed the idea of freedom of speech. We hold these ideas close to our soul as a nation and think that all valid and just governments must do the same.

We believe that our government is the pinnacle of virtue, democracy, and goodwill, and we continue to extend it within our country and internationally. For example, Native peoples in America are still treated like second class citizens. Many continue to live in abject poverty on under-resourced reservations. We also continue to invade countries under the guise of fixing their governments to look more like ours (e.g. the Iraq War of 2002). America continues to be criticized for our veiled colonialism on every continent, such as our holding of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Island as territories. We also continue to build our army and stockpile weapons—including nuclear weapons—while we tell other countries that they must abide by nuclear non-proliferation orders. In these ways, America continues to extend its roots of Manifest Destiny.

Yes, the idea of manifest destiny still exists in the minds of many Americans today and has been a driver of contemporary politics.

Manifest Destiny is the mid-nineteenth century concept that it is obvious ("manifest") that white northern Europeans are fated or meant by God (destined) to control and govern the entire North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Many Europeans settlers considered European culture superior to native culture, and democracy superior to European forms of government: therefore, they believed God wanted the United States to spread its particular culture and democratic norms (though "democratic" then only extended to white males) across the continent. This ideology fueled westward expansion, erasing doubts about the morality of what we might be doing to indigenous peoples and cultures.

Today, many still consider the United States as meant or destined to be a white, Christian nation. This feeds xenophobia, or fear of foreigners, and racism, a feeling of superiority to darker skinned peoples. This has led many to support a politics of curbing immigration, expelling immigrants who are undocumented, separating immigrant children from parents, and favoring policies that promote Christian worldviews, sexual morality, and the erasure of affirmative action programs in favor of white rights. People would not call this manifest destiny, but it does spring from the conviction that the United States was meant for white Christians.

If we define "Manifest Destiny" in a broad sense, it clearly does still exist in the minds of many or most Americans today.  In a broad sense, Manifest Destiny is the idea that the United States is somehow special and that it is destined to spread its culture and its governmental system across the world.  It is hard to deny that we still feel this way.

In the 1800s, the term "Manifest Destiny" had a much more imperialistic flavor.  We do not have that idea today.  We no longer think that we would be justified in actually taking land from other countries in the way that we took much of Mexico in the 1840s.  So, in that sense, Manifest Destiny does not still exist as a belief in our minds.  We can see this in the fact that no one thinks that we should take Iraq or Afghanistan in the way we once felt justified in taking the Philippines.

On the other hand, we still do think that other countries ought to become more like us.  We can see this in our dealings with Iraq and Afghanistan among many others.  We do feel that it is our destiny and our duty to spread democracy across the world.

How is Manifest Destiny still evident today?

As I type this answer, I am at a public library on an Indian reservation in New Mexico, so one of the legacies of Manifest Destiny is readily apparent, and I suppose if you asked any Native American, the answer would be something along the lines of cultural and linguistic genocide, not to mention physical genocide and subjugation. Of course, we would not be an empire without the completion of Manifest Destiny, and our prosperity and wealth are directly related to the taking of 3 million square miles of resource rich farmland, and the removal of those who already lived there.

I think there are a few legacies of Manifest Destiny. One is our attempts at imperialism that are still with us. I am thinking of Guam and Puerto Rico. Another example is our need to integers with sovereign countries when our interests are involved, as we did in Iraq and in so many other cases. One of the first things I thought of when I read your question was our attempts to colonize space. We even called it the final frontier. On another note, I think that one of the legacies of Manifest Destiny is our need for open spaces with little population. This is why we go camping in Alaska and visit national parks. In a way, we are returning to our Manifest Destiny roots.

It may be worth paying attention to the concept of "Manifest Destiny" as battles over the Arctic Passage heat up. The north, which has long been considered Canadian territory -- at least, according to every map and globe I've seen since I was a child -- is becoming a contentious area, with America, Greenland, and Russia all staking claims to this emerging trade route. Will America invoke God's blessing while trying to gain control of this territory?

I would suggest that we don't necessarily feel comfortable openly taking territory from other countries but we aren't shy about trying to get what we want and using whatever means necessary to get it.  So even if we aren't taking over Iraq, we are willing to go to great lengths to get favorable deals on their oil and get American companies in there to profit from its development.

This is a massive topic and you will receive a real diversity of different opinions! Personally, I think that the whole concept of Manifest Destiny has decreased since George Bush Junior left power and Obama took office, although it is still very much alive and kicking. Manifest Destiny concerns the way in which America, by divine right or choice, was made a superpower in the world and therefore was free to interfere in the politics of other countries as it liked. Although Clinton's disastrous Somalia invasion showed the limitations of this view, arguably Bush's foreign policy represented a new stage of this approach. However, fortunately, Obama seems to be steering America on a less problematic course.

You could argue that the idea of Manifest Destiny remains with us today because we continue to try to remake the world in our image.

One aspect of Manifest Destiny was the idea that we had the best culture and government in the world.  This gave us the right to spread out and take more territory so as to put more of the world under that culture and that government.

Today, we no longer believe that we have the right to more territory.  But we do believe that we have the best system of government.  We have gone to great lengths to try to make other countries of the world be more like us (Iraq and Afghanistan come to mind).  This can be seen as evidence that the idea of Manifest Destiny remains with us today.

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