Quote Originally Posted by simonj View Post
I'm pretty sure Manifest Destiny is what douchebags use to excuse being douchebags.
Well there is that, yes, but more fundamentally... Manifest Destiny is widely seen as a "God-given" right. It's the divine allocation of the west to the WASPs (if you will, as much as I hate that term). Manifest Destiny is the belief in the "right" to something, not entirely as opposed to the more "this is as it was."

Quote Originally Posted by simonj View Post
And togs, aren't you making Nietzsche's views sound a little bit more optimistic than they were?
Perhaps, but I don't believe so. Where eternal return is more akin to the Cylon belief that "All of this has happened before, and will happen again." Nietzsche's fatalism is more a construct from ""All of this has happened as it should." In fact, in the passage specifically quoted in the Amor fati page, there shouldn't be any sense optimism or pessimism because to do so would, in effect, negate the very idea he is trying to form.