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Through the years it seems to be that we have followed the same basic principles of expansion. We set out to treat those whose land we want fairly without question. Although that is not always what has happened. Starting with the Indians and ending with the Filipinos. The United States feels a sense of superiority over nations as to this very day. Theodore Roosevelt shows this very sense of control in his Annual Message to Congress, "If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States." In this address to Congress, Theodore Roosevelt also states the opinion of the nation, the idea of supremacy. As a quickly established power in the beginning after such battles as the French and Indian and Mexican war the United States earned respect. But did this respect go to our heads? T. Roosevelt also says we will be good neighbors as long as you comply with the United States, we are superior although we do not feel a need to conquer. That was the case in the eighteen-century. During this time period the U.S. offered regulations such as these to the Indians and the Mexicans. When we as a nation felt we had to step on it and gain control and bring order we did. Bring order much like we did in the Philippines in the early twentieth-century.
The Philippines was an area strictly brought into interest simply by location. Why enable someone else to acquire a trade route before the United States? As Sen. Albert Beveridge shows in his speech to Congress, citizens at this time felt a sense of need to make better by not abandoning the opportunity. If left alone the Philippines would have surly been sought after by the European nations and Japan, as said by Alfred Mahan. This is where the differences come into play, before the objective was Manifest Destiny now the United States is not to be out done.