History? What History?

"What is history but a fable agreed upon?" - Napoleon Bonaparte

I am reading my history lecture for the Mexican-American War this morning and I am reminded of this quote as well as another: "He who wins the war writes the history books."

The typical American view of this war is so fascinatingly one-sided.

Below is a part of the lecture that I am still thinking about. Manifest Destiny is a dangerous mentality and one we must be wary of even now. As if God is on the side of America once again. Hmm.

Lecture 11: "Still another view of the Mexican War was that of the fourth  school of historians offered by Albert K. Weinberg. In the American imperialistic concept of Manifest Destiny lay the impetus for the American advancement beyond the Mississippi that led to war. But Manifest Destiny reflected more than a mere hunger for land, for Americans saw themselves as the messiahs of a special way of life, of a democracy conceived in an idealistic as well as in a nationalistic sense. Democracy was symbolized individual freedom; men moved westward in order to expand its sphere of influence. The expansionists had come to believe that the free, strong by nature of their freedom and not the weak, impotent because of the autocratic character of their institutions would inherit the earth. God had willed that a weak Mexico had to succumb before the advance of his own chosen people, Anglo-Saxon Protestant and American. Is this true? Was it Manifest Destiny?"