“And one night late it came to me this way . . . (1) that we could not give them back to Spain—that would be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France or Germany . . . that would be bad for business and discreditable; (3) that we could not leave them to themselves—they were unfit for self-government . . . and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them.” —from The Life of William McKinley The last two sentences in this excerpt represent ___________, an idea that sought to justify imperialist expansion.

Anglo-Saxonism was the belief that English-speaking nations were superior to others, and that their ideas, culture, and systems of government should gain dominance over others in the world.

Another applicable term would be paternalism. "Paternalism" means believing you should treat another group of people the way a father would treat his children. A paternalistic view sees the people of another culture as being less mature and less capable than one's own culture and civilization. Often this sort of view was used to justify colonial and imperial expansion. It wasn't something unique to the times of President William McKinley in the United States (in office 1897-1901). Earlier statesmen and thinkers in Europe had adopted the view.

Even as great a champion of freedom and the rights of individuals as John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) took a paternalistic view toward non-European cultures. Mill, who wrote the great treatise On Liberty (1859) in defense of each human being's rights, couldn't quite bring himself to apply those principles to peoples of different cultures. As summarized by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

According to this logic [such as that of Mill], civilized societies like Great Britain are acting in the interest of less-developed peoples by governing them. Imperialism, from this perspective, is not primarily a form of political domination and economic exploitation but rather a paternalistic practice of government that exports “civilization” (e.g. modernization) in order to foster the improvement of native peoples.

President McKinley's words were following in a paternalistic tradition as well as being an example of Anglo-Saxonism.