Manifest Destiny: The Next Generation Essay, Research Paper
Manifest Destiny: The Next Generation. The United States of America pushed the Indians farther and farther west onto reservations. The country went to war with Mexico; we were conquerors because we had the power and the arrogance to believe that it was our destiny to span the distance between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. One great vast country, one that the history books would never be able to forget. The idea of Manifest Destiny was fathered mainly by one man, Mr. Thomas Hart Benton. This grand ideal of uniting all the land under our great government will now be carried into The Next Generation, by the current United States of America. Now the goal is to unite the United States and the Country of Mexico into one great big prosperous country. The best government that could be instituted in the country of Mexico is a Constitutional Democracy. The United States Government to be exact, I want to expand the U.S. border all the way down to Chiapas, the southern most province of Mexico. Once part of the Union, Mexico will be automatically brought to full state status with two voting members of the Senate, and 197 voting members of the House of Representatives. Their citizens will now be afforded all the rights that United States citizens have, that means minimum wage, no more sweat shops, land redistribution because of the many years of exploitation by large conglomerate corporations. They will have established military bases, centers of government in each province. The infrastructure of the state will be brought up to the level that the rest of the United States is held to today. Each old Mexican province will keep their names; they will simply become counties of the new state, just like in the rest of the states. The capital will obviously remain the same in Mexico City. The System of governing known as a Constitutional Democracy is the best option for the country of Mexico. The very best option for the country of Mexico is to join the union of states, which as one are known as the United States of America. The Constitutional Democracy that we have in the U.S. is the best for Mexico because “it can be responsive to the people. Second, because they are governed in accordance with the fundamental rules and arrangements, they are limited in the goals they can pursue and the means by which they can pursue them. Finally, like all governments, constitutional democracies can be designed to govern competently, thus providing effective government”(Magstadt 104). Translated that means, a constitutional democracy is responsive to the people because the people run the government. This quote also says that Constitutional Democracies are based on the fundamental rules of a country. Which means that whatever your people hold dear is exactly what your government is going to protect. Their main goals are to do as the people want. This also means that it is almost impossible for the government to start ruling on its own whims. If the people do not want it done, then it can not be done. A Constitutional Democracy based on Federalism, just as the United States’, works in many ways, here is a structural analysis which illustrates the complex workings inside the system. “Federalism represents a division of power between the national government and regional subdivisions. In the United States, there is a constitutional division of power between national and state governments. Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution, for instance, delineates many areas in which Congress is empowered to legislate. According to the Tenth Amendment, however, all powers not granted to the national government are reserved for the states”(Magstadt 110). That means that in the U.S. we have a system in which power is divided between the centralized national government and the local, state, city and town. This system was adopted because in U.S. history people were afraid of one central government becoming tyrannical and turning into what we had just got done fighting in the Revolutionary War. At the National level, there are three branches, the executive, the legislative and the judicial. The executive consists of the President and his advisors. The President serves a term of four years and can only be elected twice. The legislative is split into two parts, the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the Senate, each state gets two Senators. In the House each state one representative per 500,000 people in the state. In Mexico, becoming the 51 state will give it two senators, and one hundred and ninety seven representatives.At the local level, the Mexicans will have a Governor who will be stationed in Mexico City. Each old Mexican province or state, will now become the counties of Mexico. Each will have two senators, and a proportional amount of representatives. All will be directly elected just as it is here in the U.S. The reasons why the Mexicans will accept this new government and actually start to prosper under it are quite simple actually. First all Mexicans will now be United States citizens with all
the rights we already have. Once all of these rights have been accepted and are understood, the Mexicans will become empowered. Second, once Mexico joins the United States all of the land will be redistributed fairly. All the huge international corporations taking advantage of the cheap labor and cheap land will be forced out for a time. This way all the impoverished Mexicans can start over the correct way. Now the fertile land will be theirs to use, not just to work. Then the Mexican farmers will become the new middle class and the wealth disparity will slowly start to dissolve. The heritage of the Mexicans will not be threatened by this merger of countries either, the way people say it will. The United States has been and probably always will be the melting pot of nations. Everyone is free to retain their culture, experience new ones or create their own. We are a country of tolerance; the Mexicans will fit in just fine, if anything we will learn something from each other. Another large concern is about the potential language barrier. I answer that concern with a very simple answer; there is no language barrier. The Spanish language is one of the most popularly studied languages in our public schools today. Also huge regions of the country already speak Spanish, if a barrier exists it will last but a second in the grand future of our united country.The transition will not be a revolution, that would only hurt Mexico more, I agree with Mr. Edmund Burke in this respect. We are both conservatives when it comes to revolution. His reflections on the revolution are negative because a conservative believes that to move forward in anything, you must build off the past, or tradition. When liberals call for revolutions that completely wipe the slate clean and start over, they do more damage then good. Take for example Russia, the country is still in a state of limbo after Lenin overthrew the Czars so many years ago. This is a tragedy to avoid at all costs with Mexico. The transition to a Constitutional Democracy in this sense is the smartest choice because the system they currently have is very similar to the one I am about to put into practice. Therefore, in a sense I am building on the tradition that they have been using so far. In the book, “Politics in Mexico”, Roderic Ai Camp, paints a very descriptive picture of Mexican politics. The interesting thing is that their way of getting into and becoming part of the system is almost identical with ours. Camp states, “the political clique, the “camarilla.” It determines more then any other variable discussed, who goes to the top of the political ladder, what paths are taken, and the specific posts they are assigned”(Camp 114). The “camarilla” is the same as our political cliques. In American politics it is all about who you know and what they can do for you. It is the same in Mexico apparently.Although if we follow the complete tradition and history of Mexico, some people might say I am wrong in assuming that a democracy is best for their country. They might say that since before Cortes came, the Aztecs and the Mayans were using Authoritarian systems of government. I respond to this with a picture of a typical Mexican taken from our “Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans” reading. In this, Alan Riding describes Mexicans as, “not a team player: in sports he excels at boxing but not soccer.” “Finds it difficult to subscribe to any ideology that demands strict coherence between his ideas and his actions”(Riding 5). This tells us that Mexicans are all about the Individual, just as we are here in the United States. How could people like this work with a government that is all about the group, which makes decisions based on the whole of the country, not on the good of all the individual citizens in the country. The United States Constitutional Democracy is based completely on the good of the citizen, Mexicans will fit in with the rest of us perfectly. Now many people will argue that Mexico needs strong leadership right now in its days of hardship. Thomas Hobbes would argue for either an Authoritarian or Totalitarian State because he believes that humans need an all-powerful government to keep them in check and to protect them from themselves. I agree, but I do not agree with the way an Authoritarian or Totalitarian government goes about business. In either of those two governments the citizen has no rights if the government says so, everything is as the dictator wants it to be no matter what the people want. The citizens must be afforded all the rights that a human being deserves, without such rights the citizens of Mexico will never be able to get their country out if its troubles. The best place to receive such fair treatment is the United States of America, which now will include Mexico, the 51 state.The country of Mexico has many options to choose from, the best of which is to become a state in the United States. Once Constitutional Democracy is in practice in Mexico, the state will start to improve. Many try to argue the best way is to take charge with a dictator but I do not