America, Amerikkka: Elect Nation and Imperial Violence

by Radford Ruether,Rosemary

• ISBN13: 9781845531577
• ISBN10: 1845531574
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-09-18
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

America, Amerikkka traces the historical and ideological patterns of the U.S. American view of themselves as an elect nation inhabiting a promised land and enjoying a uniquely favored relation with God and a mission to spread redemption qua democracy throughout the world. This view of unique election has been coupled with racial exclusivism privileging and marginalizing non-whites as citizens of the nation. In the 18th and 19th centuries a doctrine of the rights of man excluded the two primary non-white groups present in the territory, Native Americans and Africans. Manifest Destiny justified the expansion across the North American continent, while forcing Mexico through war to cede a third of its land, excluding Mexicans, Indians, Africans and Asians from this expanded citizenry. In the 20th century, the American perception of its mission became imperialist beyond the continental borders, occupying the Philippines and the Caribbean and claiming hegemonic dominance over Latin America and the Pacific islands. After the Second World War, the United States has taken the role of the Global policeman to enforce neocolonial relations over much of the third world. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union this imperial reach has been translated into a claim for global dominance. The book also details alternative protest traditions within American culture against this trajectory of imperial violence and racism in leaders such as Martin Luther King. It will seek to formulate an alternative vision of global relations between peoples based on justice and mutuality, rather than hegemonic dominance of a number one nation over all others.

Author Biography

Rosemary Radford Ruether is Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology emeritus at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

Table of Contents

Introduction : the two faces of America : the ideal America as deception and as protest	p. 1
Elect nations of Europe and the making of the American myth of chosenness	p. 7
The rights of man and the excluded others - the revolutionary era and beyond	p. 33
Manifest destiny and Anglo-Saxon racism - 1815-1875	p. 70
Manifest destiny and American empire : 1890-1934	p. 100
America's global mission : the Cold War era, 1945-89	p. 136
American empire and its denouement : 1990-2007	p. 173
Alternative visions of America : the protest tradition	p. 211
Toward a U.S. theology of liberation and letting go	p. 250
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