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When John Winthrop led the first wave of settlers to New England he gave a sermon to his fellow Puritans, speaking of America as a future example to the world: “We shall be as a city upon a hill.” Yet today, less-than-shining cities upon hills stretch from New England to California, the frontier spirit that once defined America is fading. With bureaucrats entrenched from coast to coast, where can the frontiersmen of this generation escape to?
A recommencement of Manifest Destiny, from establishing Martian colonies to purchasing Greenland, offers a necessary counterforce to bureaucratic tyranny, restoring the pioneering ethos of the frontier. A frontier is not just land: it is the absence of centralized authority—a space where individuals can act without bureaucratic oversight, experiment without permission and compete without regulatory capture.
American history is littered with examples of innovation on the frontier. A North American frontier free from the presence of European monarchy enabled the development of a constitutional Republic. Meanwhile, the Homestead Act gave free land to farmers who then pioneered dry farming techniques and mechanical reapers. Without the frontier, elites would have monopolized land, blocking progress—just like in Europe. In the oil boom, Texas’ loose regulations let wildcatters drill freely, giving rise to Exxon, Shell and Texaco. More recently, SpaceX was capable of innovating in hard tech when everything from airplanes to automobiles stagnated precisely because space remained a wholly unregulated frontier.
The continuous struggle between frontierism and bureaucracy dates back to Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun’s 13th-century writings in Muqaddimah. There, he wrote that societies are continuously engaged in a cycle of transformation, emerging from self-reliant frontiersmen, only to be crippled by a bureaucracy that zaps the energy of its people.
While the Old World stagnates in bureaucracy, which covers everything from the curvature of bananas to watermarks for AI avatars, the verdict for the American experiment is still out. Our frontier spirit has far outlasted others precisely because the fundamental idea of America is frontierism. Each of our founding documents from the Constitution to the Declaration of Independence has delimited government power through individual rights in order to mimic the freedom of the frontier.
This new administration has introduced projects such as DOGE, which seeks to extend on the Founding Fathers’ history of delimiting government in order to slow Khaldun's envisioned bureaucratic decline. Yet, the American approach to avoid overzealous regulation and onerous taxation has long been through a pattern of escape to the frontiers.
Thus, it is no surprise that Silicon Valley, the most innovative network in America, is located a continent away from the government in DC.
Our final frontier, Silicon Valley, is fast devolving into the coerciveness of the Old World. For example, SpaceX, a company founded to push humanity forward, found itself trapped by the bureaucratic dead weight of California. The most laughable example involves regulators delaying launches for fear that a rocket landing in the ocean would hit a whale. With red tape crushing California, the frontier has receded to the sea, and frontiersmen have nowhere else to go, leaving pioneers scrambling to artificially create frontiers anew.
This is embodied in Silicon Valley’s push to build new cities. It isn’t just a business trend—it’s the latest expression of frontierism. With Starbase in the wilds of Boca Chica, Prospéra in Honduras, the envisioned city of Praxis, and the Seasteading Institute, the Valley’s builders are doing exactly what their pioneer ancestors did before them: fleeing stagnation to build something new.
While new cities may work for a chosen few, the recommencement of Manifest Destiny will provide an enduring means to escape bureaucracy for the many. Hence, when President Trump states, “It's America's 'Manifest Destiny' to plant a flag on Mars,” it is a reassertion of America as a frontier society.
Trump’s desire to establish a Martian colony would realize the prosperous frontier society that both Ibn Khaldun and the Founding Fathers envisioned. Space colonies would provide unprecedented freedom to experiment and innovate unfettered by bureaucrats' concerns. Meanwhile, the Martian frontier would chasten bureaucratic overreach back on Earth by providing an alternative home for the overtaxed and overregulated.
During the mission to the moon, we dedicated 6% of GDP to NASA. Today, we pour nearly half the federal budget into entitlement programs, funding the stagnation of the Old World instead of investing in the next frontier. A fraction of that could fuel a Mars mission—if we still have the will to reach for something greater.
Beyond Mars, the purchase of Greenland would align with President Trump’s vision for a rebirth of American manufacturing. Greenland, a land rich in untapped resources, could serve as a new frontier for industrial pioneers, providing a strategic advantage in rare-earth mining and technological innovation.
One could imagine pioneers from El Segundo’s hard-tech scene—deploying automated drill rigs for mineral discovery or designing AI-powered robotic miners—transforming its rugged landscape into a hub of frontier industry. With the freedom to experiment and vast natural resources to exploit, Manifest Destiny would find a new expression in the Arctic, ensuring that America remains at the forefront of technological and industrial advancement.
The next frontier is waiting. America must recognize that survival depends on embracing the pioneering spirit of its past. By championing new frontiers—whether in space, Greenland, or elsewhere—we can reverse the stagnation that threatens to erode our civilization. The choice is ours: forge ahead or succumb to decay.
