Here's One Use Of U.S. Power Jacques Can't Stop

The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal ^ | December 17, 2004 | Daniel Henninger

[quidnunc]

"American influence" is the greatest white whale of the 21st century.

We see where a curator at France's Pompidou Center says his museum is opening a branch in Hong Kong, because "U.S. culture is too strong" there, and "we need to have a presence in Asia to counterbalance the American influence." With the Pompidou Center?

"American influence" is the great white whale of the 21st century, and Jacques Chirac is the Ahab chasing her with a three-masted schooner. Along for the ride is a crew that includes Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Vladimir Putin, North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, Kofi Annan, the Saudi royal family, Robert Mugabe, the state committee of Communist China and various others who have ordained themselves leaders for life. At night, seated around the rum keg, they talk about how they have to stop American political power, the Marines or Hollywood.

The world is lucky these despots and demagogues are breaking their harpoons on this hopeless quest. Because all around them their own populations are grabbing the one American export no one can stop: raw technology. Communications technologies, most of them developed in American laboratories (often by engineers who voted for John Kerry), have finally begun to affect an historic shift in the relationship between governments and the governed. The governed are starting to win.

Not that long ago, in 1989, the world watched demonstrators sit passively in Tiananmen Square and fight the authorities with little more than a papier-mâché Statue of Liberty. Poland's Solidarity movement had to print protest material with homemade ink made from oil because the Communist government confiscated all the printers' ink.

In 2004, in Ukraine's Independence Square, they had cell phones.

-snip-

[expatguy]

France is our friend.

[LibertarianInExile]

Tech takes out tyrants BUMP!

[carl in alaska]

Comm tech bump.

[risk]

this article is funny - America is a whale and Chirac is Captain Ahab.

[Jackal007]

To our "peace loving" French friends, I say, two words:

RAINBOW WARRIOR! Now, that was r-e-a-l-l-y "peaceful" wasn't it!

[Marie007]

If Chirac is the captain, certainly the boat will go down. Thanks to the whale. Do you know this, I hate Chirac.

[risk]

Some Frenchies are OK. Marie is trying to adjust attitudes over there, which I support 100%.

[Brit_Guy]

The french terror of 'US Culteral influence' always amuses me. To me America has no uniquley American culture - just a melting pot of the best of human culture. The country is only about 250 years old - the 'melting pot' is of the best its all comers brought unrestained by a national tradition which makes it adaptive, modern and innovative. US culture is Human Culture. If croque monsieurs were better than Big Macs the Americans would have a crogue monsiur hut on every corner like they do Pizza Huts. It's not bigotry - I understand if you learn philosphy in the US you will learn Voltaire. The Unites States culture is the output of a market place of ideas from around the world. The good ideas stick the poor fail. Vive Etas Unis!

[Petronski]

The Soviet Union was defeated in part from within, through the use of samizdat, pro-freedom literature and coordination distributed via fax. The government lost control of the story, the dissidents organized. Internal pressure for glasnost and perestroika was brought to bear. The rest is history.

[risk]

Correction: US culture is Anglo-Saxon culture, which includes Norman and French influence.

[Brit_Guy]

Anglo-Saxon culture? Clearly a massive influence, particulary in the christian religious basis of the founding fathers and the way that still informs America today - but I see little inherently anglo saxon in the adoption of the cinema as the prevalent art form, or the embracing of mexican food into the national cuisine, or anything paricurlary anglo-saxon about the concept of democracy as taken and exported so passionatly by the USA!

[Atlantic Friend]

Extremely peaceful, I'd say, given the fact it was not an operation aiming at making casualties, the Portuguese photographer being a collateral and unintended victim.

A more brutal or ruthless approach would have been to disable the boat in the middle of the ocean, or to storm it with naval commandos. A real ruthless approach would have been to let the boat wander in the zone and detonate the warhead anyway.

Let's face it, the Greenpeace crew's objective was to mess with nuclear tests which are, by nature, matters of national security and which allow, subsequently, harsh measures against all kind of disruption.

[risk]

but I see little inherently anglo saxon in ... the concept of democracy as taken and exported so passionatly by the USA!

Have you read the Magna Carta lately? What about Guy Fawkes day? What about the contradictory struggle to unify the British Isles and the desire to stay independent?

What Say the Reeds at Runnymede?
A poem commemorating the signing of Magna Carta
Runnymede, Surrey, June 15, 1215

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
What say the reeds at Runnymede?
The lissom reeds that give and take,
That bend so far, but never break,
They keep the sleepy Thames awake
With tales of John at Runnymede.

At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Oh, hear the reeds at Runnymede:
'You musn't sell, delay, deny,
A freeman's right or liberty.
It wakes the stubborn Englishry,
We saw 'em roused at Runnymede!

When through our ranks the Barons came,
With little thought of praise or blame,
But resolute to play the game,
They lumbered up to Runnymede;
And there they launched in solid line
The first attack on Right Divine,
The curt uncompromising "Sign!'
They settled John at Runnymede.

At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Your rights were won at Runnymede!
No freeman shall be fined or bound,
Or dispossessed of freehold ground,
Except by lawful judgment found
And passed upon him by his peers.
Forget not, after all these years,
The Charter signed at Runnymede.'

And still when mob or Monarch lays
Too rude a hand on English ways,
The whisper wakes, the shudder plays,
Across the reeds at Runnymede.
And Thames, that knows the moods of kings,
And crowds and priests and suchlike things,
Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings
Their warning down from Runnymede!

[Brit_Guy]

"Have you read the Magna Carta lately?"

Nope. But I did read a good John Grisham.

"What about Guy Fawkes day?"

Yup. We celebrated that. Part of our culture. Did you?

"What about the contradictory struggle to unify the British Isles and the desire to stay independent?"

Is that inherantly anglo-saxon?

[risk]

Is that inherantly anglo-saxon?

No, but I'm not convinced that it's universal either.