One of the great successes of conservatism is the ability to completely distort history but since you asked for sources here goes:
1) The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 8 Vols (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press) 1951-1954 V254
2) "United States Indian Policy and the Debate over Philippne Annexation: Implications for the Origins of American Imperialism" The Journal of American History 66, no 4 (March 1980) 810-831
3) Eric T. L. Love, Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism 1865-1900 (Chapel HIll: University of North Carolina Press, 2004
4) TR, The Winning of the west 4:200
5) Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad. 1876-1917 (New York: Hill & Wang, 2000).
6) Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Phillipines 1899-1903. (New Havety, CT: Yale University Press, 1982).
7) James Blount, American Occupation of the Phillipines 1898-1912 (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1913).
Along with several others.
As for knowing what people think. There are surviving records in the forms of: (i) Documented Conversations (ii) Collected Letters (iii) Policy Decisions and Documented Statements in support (for example to the senate or congress).
And what sources/evidence is your opinion that this is revisionist history based on? The fact that it doesn't jive with your idea of what America stands for?