Recognizing the Legacy of US Imperialism

In many ways, the rise of US imperialism in the 1890s is as much our origin story as is the often-recounted and glorified Revolutionary War. Imperialism is a less shiny tale, less given to celebration, but in the oft-forgotten episodes of imperial violence (such as the overthrow of Hawaii, the Spanish-American War, and the brutalizing of the Philippines) are the roots of current US foreign policy and the first seeds of a mentality that would spawn so much blowback. 
 
Given the historical importance and present-day relevance, it is crucial that imperialism be taught well and thoroughly in schools. Yet my textbook calls the coup that deposed Queen Liliuokalani in Hawaii a “revolution,” and states that she “yielded her authority,” not that she was subverted, betrayed, and overthrown. My history class discusses imperialism in some kind of strange vacuum--we recognize that McKinley’s humanitarian-esque rationales for conquest are facades, and we talked about the hypocrisy of the Anti-Imperialist League’s disavowal of the Philippines war but not of the genocide of Indigenous people in the US. What we don’t talk about--what history curricula seem to have a curious amnesia for--is the legacy of imperialism. Does it not warrant shock that not only was the Philippines not granted the independence we promised during the war, but we kept possession of them until 1946? Should we not talk about how the empire has sprawled, stretched, and expanded to cover the globe? How imperial overthrows of foreign governments are by no means a thing of the past (within the last several years alone, we’ve helped depose governments in Honduras, Libya, Ukraine, just to name three off the top of my head)? How the combination of Manifest Destiny, the Turner thesis, A.T. Mahan’s push for sea power, the Monroe Doctrine/Roosevelt Corollary, and Social Darwinism congealed into the toxic stew of rationales and self-righteousness that uphold our imperial foreign policy? How our “current issues” are always worsening reprises of mistakes we’ve made before and situations that we only seem to exacerbate?

It's always struck me as ironic that despite every war-hawk battle cry that urges us to remember a time we were presumably wronged--from Remember the Maine to Remember Pearl Harbor--we are so memory-challenged when it comes to remembering the wrongs we've inflicted on others, and understanding how they might be coming back to bite us.
 
The idea that the US is an empire still receives pushback from those who want to or do believe that we are a democracy with good intentions and a healthy respect for international law, or who simply dislike the connotations of the term empire. By definition, we are an empire, intervening in affairs not directly tangent to ours and subjugating people at whim, and maintaining dramatic military reach through nearly every point of the world, thanks to our 1000 or so military bases in other people’s countries (as well as our actual remaining colonies). But we don’t learn about this in the school-sanctioned discussion of imperialism. Today my history teacher described how the US double-crossed Emilio Aguinaldo in the Philippines, promising liberation and then brutally subjugating his country. “Do you feel proud of your country?” he asked us, mildly mocking. I doubt we did. But because imperialism is relegated to a distant time period when it was the thing in vogue--come on, everyone was doing it!--it’s hard for us to understand just how proud we should not be. If we don’t condone the Philippines War, then by all means let’s extend that criticism to the modern-day fruits of the exact same policies in play back then.