A central idea that is said to have even become a part of the national character is the sense that the US have a mission to fulfill.[9]

   This idea was first mentioned and spread by Puritans emigrating to the new world in the mid 17th century. In a sermon in 1630, their spiritual leader and first governor of Massachusetts Bay John Winthrop presented to his followers a notion of a divine mission. In Winthrop’s words, God „dwell(s) among [them], as his owne people and will commaund a blessing upon“ [10]  them to fulfill his will in creating a new Jeru- salem, „a Citty upon a hill“ where „the eyes of all people are upon [them]“.[11]  As historian W. A. Williams puts it, the invocation of supernatural authority led Ame- ricans to assume „a posture of moral and ideological superiority at an early date“. [12]  While the Puritan notion of a City upon a hill can be understood as a mere role model for the rest of the world, its ideas favored the emergence of a more active ideal of the chosen people.

   Thomas Paine was the one to make this creed popular among the rebellious colo- nists. In his pamphlet Common Sense published in January 1776 the Scottish immi- grant offered the new nation  as the „asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty“[13]  the unprecedented perspective of having it in its „power to begin the world over again“.[14]  The conviction spread that the chosen people of God „could lay claim to special rights and obligations“[15] as the Age of Enlighten- ment dawned and sent its rays of hope of a possible betterment of mankind over the Atlantic.[16]  With democracy implemented in the New World, the U.S. had come to perceive itself as the agent „of ideas and principles which were considered of uni- versal applicability“[17] - universal that is to say that the entire world would be- come the Diaspora to convert.

   Now that they were furthermore „marked out as the keepers of the flickering flame of liberty“[18] and „secure in their faith in liberty, Americans would set about remaking others in their own image“.[19]