Renaming A Mountain Is Just The Start

             McKinley                             O'Dumbo

There's been no Hawaiian nation since 1898, when President McKinley abolished the monarchy and annexed the islands as a U.S. territory. That may soon change, however, thanks to the Hawaiian sitting in the Oval Office.

As our first anti-colonialist president, Barack Obama is no fan of McKinley, who practically overnight turned America into a "colonial power." Winning the Spanish-American War, the Republican leader took control of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam and effectively Cuba, which became a U.S. protectorate.

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While none of these acquisitions sits well with Obama, he views McKinley's war-time overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom as unforgivable.

"As American soldiers and settlers moved steadily west and southwest, successive administrations described the annexation of territory in terms of 'manifest destiny' — the conviction that such expansion was preordained, part of God's plan," Obama wrote in his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

"Of course," he added, "manifest destiny also meant bloody and violent conquest — of Native American tribes forcibly removed from their lands. It was a conquest that, like slavery ... tended to be justified in explicitly racist terms."

After McKinley and other "imperialists" turned their attention overseas, "Hawaii was annexed, giving America a foothold in the Pacific," Obama lamented, comparing it to the "colonization" practiced by Europe. "The Spanish-American war delivered Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines into U.S. control."

In his 1995 memoir, "Dreams From My Father," Obama expressed his anti-colonial sentiment in angrier tones. He described McKinley's annexation of Hawaii as an "ugly conquest."

The resentment runs deep: McKinley represents everything Obama's anti-colonialist father, who met his mother at the University of Hawaii, and his anti-colonialist mentor, Hawaiian communist Frank Marshall Davis, told him was bad about America. And this anti-colonialist agenda explains Obama's mysterious decision last month to strip McKinley's name from America's tallest peak after more than 100 years there. Mount McKinley is now "Mount Denali," in deference to Native Americans.

But the president isn't just renaming McKinley's mountain; he's essentially de-annexing McKinley's islands.

Read the rest of Paul Sperry's op-ed HERE.

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