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    su

    or lofty secular ideals that create this thrill may be merely the voice of

    the larger social beast calling for some ultimate

    contribution--demanding that a seventh century Mohammedan hurl

    himself against the defenses of a city far from his ancestral home; or

    that his descendant drive a truck of explosives into an American office

    building.

    Americans, too, have heard the cry of the superorganism.  We

    have been eager to funnel fresh food into the hungry maw of our

    society.  Albert Beveridge, an influential American senator21 at the turn

    of the century, had a habit of making statements like the following:

    "[God] has made us the master organizers of the world to establish

    system where chaos reigns....  He has made us adept in government

    that we may administer government among savage and senile

    peoples....  He has marked the  American people as His chosen Nation

    to finally lead in the regeneration of the world.  This is the divine

    mission of America...  We are trustees of the world's progress,

    guardians of its righteous peace."22  Beveridge's words were designed

    as a justification for swallowing foreign societies, and reassembling

    them as pieces of the American organism.  Two territories that the

    Senator and his colleagues were particularly eager to absorb were

    Cuba and The Philippines.

    An amoeba hunting for fellow creatures whose substance it can

    absorb would find such rationalizations for digesting its prey quite

    handy.  Just think, his hunger represents an attempt to regenerate a

    senile world!

    An ideology is usually a high-minded mask for a group's itch to

    take power and resources from other social groups.  It's a meme--a

    cluster of ideas anxious to fatten on the substance of a superorganism's

    neighbors.

    Hans Morgenthau, the political theorist, has said that men don't

    willingly accept the truth about human nature, and especially about

    political nature.  The aim of politics, Morgenthau says, is not to make

      perior being whose power leaves them in awe.  But the holy vision

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