9. The Other America: The Forgivers and the Peacemakers (2003)

In spite of all the public rhetoric about the United States being the world’s policeman, a corollary of the Manifest Destiny doctrine, in spite of the new drive to achieve mastery in space through an anti-ballistic missile defense system, and in spite of our commitment to keep order in our own society by being tougher on crime, there is another America with a long history of nonviolence and peacemaking, forgiveness, and reconciliation. This history goes back to William Penn’s Holy Experiment in the colony of Pennsylvania in the last decades of the 1600s, which involved both Quaker settlers and Native Americans. … It might be said that from the beginning, the two traditions of the gentle Quakers and the judgmental Puritans were present but that the Puritan tradition has remained more visible. Although the willingness to use violence to right wrongs has been the more celebrated image, traditions of nonviolent problem solving and peaceful change strategies played a significant role in the American Revolution itself and have been alive and present in a continuing series of movements over the past three centuries.