A new Manifest Destiny

If you'll remember from high school history class, Manifest Destiny was essentially an excuse to kill Native Americans (and then steal their land). See, 19th century folk figured that God (or God using one of his cool nicknames, like "Providence") _wanted_ the United States to be a bi-coastal country.

Of course that's ridiculous. Any being worthy of an adjective like "supreme" would no be worried about how many oceans a newly formed country bordered.

Manifest Destiny was a clever name for a hard reality: The US was going to become a bi-coastal country either way, so we might as well acknowledge it (and do what we always do: claim that God is behind the whole thing). Arguments against western expansion were silly because anyone looking at a map -- or a population survey of the Native Americans living in the west -- could see that the US was going to expand, violently if necessary. Once that expansion was given rock 'em sock 'em name like MD, any lingering arguments -- moral or political -- dried up.

"Listen," the proponents of MD were saying, "it's going to happen no matter what and further, God wants it to happen! So, stop your whining, grab a gun, and go start killing indians! I'll be in the van."

I think it's time that we took Manifest Destiny out of the slogan closet, dusted it off, and brought it back into popular usage. There are some things that we all know are going to happen eventually and that anybody resisting those things are going to be proved wrong. Bringing them under the MD umbrella seems, to me, a wise move; doing so will hasten their acceptance and, more importantly, when people of the future look back on the early 21st century, they'll credit this blog as being the starting point for the revolution. It's a slam-dunk that somebody builds a statue of me, which, as you know, would be awesome.

Here is my proposal for the new Manifest Destiny:

1. Gay people are people. There is nothing different about them except where they like to put their private parts. The linguistic dancing people are doing now ("Civil Union!") is about as retarded as the last time tried this ("Separate but Equal!").

2. The Scientific Method isn't a "theory". It's a way of looking at the world that has led to things like the toilet, the computer, and the Mangroomer back-hair shaver. If the Scientific Method should happen to contradict your religious beliefs it's not because the Method is flawed; stop attacking it and use this crisis of faith to win some more brownie points with whatever God you're afraid you're pissing off.

3. There is no such thing as Race. In fact, in the entire classification system you'll remember from sophomore Bio, the only hard and fast rule is for species (if you can bang it and it produces a child, it's part of your species). Race and Subspecies (and indeed, the larger groupings like Family and Phylum) are all pretty much guesses based on how you look. You'll of course notice that people look different (and there should be no harm in pointing that out), but trying to classify what those differences "mean" is silly.

4. Men and women are biologically different. The most negative lasting element of 60s Feminism is the belief that men and women are completely equal in all ways. Instead of focusing all of their efforts on political equality, there was an unfathomable push to make people believe in biological equality as well. We all know this is false from the time we're two years old. We need to accept the biological differences between us (while maintaining the political equality!) and restructure our post-feminist world to best suit the needs of both men and women.

So now that I have three (count 'em THREE!) readers, I can ask for comments and not look like a crazy person. What would you add to the new Manifest Destiny? What are things that we know, in our hearts, is true (and that will no doubt be accepted by everyone in the coming decades) but that there are pockets of silly resistance to presently?