PARTISAN REVIEW
523
tained in the one word "freedom." The factual exposition does not tell
us anything more than that farm leaders expressed the same confusion
that industrial leaders did, and that this was transmitted to the popula–
tion at large.
Let us now go back to Williams's aim of writing history whose pur–
pose would be "changing those ideas and policies" of militant expan–
sionism. And let me present two different models for accomplishing this
purpose.
In
the first model, which I will call the Radical Model, we ask:
what are some of the crucial elements in the process by which a citizen
unaware either of the fact of expansionism, or the undesirability of its
consequences, might gain such awareness that he might be induced to
change his ideas and work to transform the government's policies? Let
me suggest a few of these elements:
1.) learning from historical evidence that the U.S. did indeed pur–
sue over a long period of time policies of aggressive expansion (thus
demolishing traditional notions that we are "different," that we tend to
mind our own business, that we only leave our territory to help others
in distress) ;
2.) seeing the
effects
of that expansionism on other peoples (thus
dissolving the myth that we brought democracy and prosperity to those
we came to dominate) ;
3.) learning what
interests
were involved (which were advanced,
and which were retarded) - thus destroying the notion that disinterest–
ed idealism was the main motivation, disposing of the idea that the
majority of Americans gained either security or prosperity from ex–
pansion;
4.) learning how the above facts were mystified by national lead–
ers, how they became a generally accepted mythology: how symbols like
"freedom" and "national interest" and "making the world safe for
democracy" and "self-determination" were used to cover harsh actions
for crass motives; how the "Open Door," the "Good Neighbor" and
the "Alliance for Progress" could fool us all (thus suggesting what is
necessary to pull apart that mythology).
These four points are only the beginning of the Radical Model.
They expose what has happened, who has been benefited and who hurt,
and how has all this been concealed. We can think of additional jobs
for a radical historian: to show the possibility of a system that does not
require imperial expansion (by finding moments and places in the past
where such a future was even faintly foreshadowed) ; to show the means
by
which we might move from the present situation to that preferable
