Frontier Loss Angst; Grow Up, Folks

In 1893, three years after the superintendent of the Census announced that the western frontier was closed, Frederick Jackson Turner, a historian from the University of Wisconsin, advanced a thesis that the conquest of the western frontier had given American society its special character.
...Digital History

It didn't take long for that 'special character' to get really, really restless. No more frontier! A continent already totally subdivided and full up, drat.
That means we have to stay put! Make do! But we have always moved on. Abandoned homesteads. Conquered wilderness. Slain enemies! What will we do, we can't live this way? No more Westward Ho! No John Wayne?

. As the Western United States was gradually becoming less of a frontier and more of a part of America, many believed that overseas expansion was vital to maintaining the American spirit.
The publication of Alfred T. Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power upon History in 1890, which advocated three factors crucial to The United States' ascension to the position of "world power": the construction of a canal in South America (later influencing the decision for the construction of the Panama Canal), expansion of the U.S. naval power, and the establishment of a trade/military post in the Pacific, so as to stimulate trade with China. This publication had a strong influence on the idea that a strong navy stimulated trade, and influenced policy makers such as Theodore Roosevelt and other proponents of a large navy
Wikipedia

Let's look around, surely there's a frontier to conquer, somewhere. Didn't take very long, five years to be exact, and then...
Ah, Cuba. Always had our eye on that little gem. We can beat Spain, that's an 'old country', backward, not 'go getters' like us. And so it began. And continues still.
Part of our 'special character' to always expand, to grow... to metastasize? Seems that way. We can't help it. Think: Puerto Rico-Guam-American Samoa-Marianas-US Virgin Isles-Alaska-Hawaii, it goes on. Jack Kennedy touted a 'New Frontier', space, nah, not the same. Administrations come and go; some liberal, most not. Doesn't seem to matter. It's genetic, DNA American style.

Don't you see? That's our charm. Mark Twain spoke of ' The Innocents Abroad', that's us. Willfully innocent? Perhaps. Probably not. Jury not in yet. But a full Century of thrashing about the globe longing, oh so plaintively, for our 'lost cause', our liebestraume, is quite enough. Stay home, folks. Make do. Live simply; within borders, for a welcome change. The world thanks you in advance.



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