Dad, What's Unabhangkeitstag?

"Is that when the thirteen colonies broke away from England?" My ten year inquired out of nowhere at 6 AM German time this morning. "Yeah, why do you want to know, eat your breakfast," I mumbled, too sleepy to be very curious. "Because I am afraid my teacher will ask me, since I am wearing this T-shirt and I'm the only American in the class." With an effort, I adjusted my gaze upward to his white T-shirt. It was brand new. Prominent on his breast was an image of the flag and below that:

Waking up now, I reflected that if the Old Navy company could so shamelessly trade on the image of the flag, it ought in decency at least amend the line below to:

But then I thought, what could be more traditional in America than commercializing the flag?

"Waddayamean, you're the only American in class, what's that got to do with the Fourth of July?" My paternal antannae were also coming to life. I remembered that the kids had sometimes returned from Gymnasium, German high school, and recited seemingly off-hand remarks from professors disparaging America and especially George Bush. Some of the hearsay reports had been pretty rough, describing America as killing Iraqis or causing global warming and the like.

"I think he will call on me to explain the Declaration of Indepencence to the whole class," masking his apprehension. "So, what will you tell them?"

"That is how we got free of England," he replied, in German. "That's right, as far as it goes. Never mind breakfast, lets get to the computer, it time to search FreeRepublic." A few minutes later we had a copy of the declaration printed out, with the font changed to italics for psuedo verisimiltude to the venerable document.

"There is actually a couple of ideas in here that are more important than announcing our break with England," I said, highlighting with a yellow marker this passage:

that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

"This means that who you are, what rights you have, come directly from God and not from the government. In fact, the government is there to serve you, as a child of God, not the other way around, and when the government takes away your rights, the government is not legitimate, and you can change it."

"What's legitimate?" Ah, " berechtigt," I answered. I must have gotten it right for he seemed satisfied with the translation and his Deutsch is better than mine. Handing him the printout, I said, "take this with you, read it on the bus, and when you get to class you tell them these ideas are America's gift to the world. A lot of people in Europe think your rights come from the government, not the other way around. No one had ever done this 'for real' before. Look what it says here just before where they signed it, it means they knew they were risking their lives:"

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor

An hour later, his mother asked me, "Did you give him a printout of the Declaration of Independence?" "Yup," I proudly responded.

I travel to Europe frequently and am always impressed by the rampant and ingrained anti-Americanism that permeates everything there. Case in point: I just spent ten days in Germany, and in the course of casual conversations precisely two mentions of American movies came up. In both cases the person I was talking to eagerly wanted to know if I'd seen "Stupid White Men" by Michael Moore. On another occasion two years ago I perused a copy of der Spiegel... therein was precisely one advertisement for an American movie: "Bowling for Columbine", again from Mr. Moore.

See, Michael Moore is truly the most valid and pertinent American, according to many Europeans-- the only one telling the truth about his eeevil countrymen and the country's eeevil capitalist system and especially that eeevil fascist chimp of a President they regard us as having, a walking amalgam of idiocy and brilliance and bloodthirst and religious mania and greed. Meanwhile the American nation at large is stuffed with fat, loud, uncouth, lazy, prudish, racist, narrow-minded greedy people who all drive around in huge behemoth automobiles that they don't need, all of this financed by ripping off Africa. For entertainment we pay our Israeli friends to blow up poor Palestinians and bake their blood into matzohs.

I am not kidding.

And this is nothing new. Once, fifteen years ago, I was jet-lagged in Paris and, unable to get to sleep, turned on the hotel-room TV, something I rarely do. Now, I don't speak the language, but the message of what I saw was very clear: it was some sort of music video, with images of the U.S. flag interweaved with horror photos from Vietnam, and pictures of poor homeless people sleeping bedraggled in the street, pictures of big Navy ships firing, pictures of mushroom clouds blooming, pictures of fat rich people with twinkling rings sitting on yachts, and so on. It could not have been more puerile and heavy-handed and nihilistic.

Europe--"old" Europe--envies us, the way a bitter crinkled dowager envies the smooth beauty of fresh-faced teens on the beach. And that makes them hate us on a low, visceral level. It is psycologically important that they preserve a measure of superiority. Symptomatic of that, then, is a measure of what psychologists call "projection". For example, Americans outwork and outproduce Europe by a huge margin by any measure, so Europeans look for ways to brand us as "lazy", for example. They point to silly things like our national preference for automatic transmissions: "See, Americans are too lazy and stupid to shift for themselves." This from people who get six weeks of paid time off a year.

Now, certainly, this isn't to say all Old Europeans feel this way, but I'm comfortable in stating that a large majority of their "opinion-makers" do, and they act accordingly, stirring anti-American envy and disdain into the Continental zeitgeist.

I'm sure nathanbedford and frankiep see similar subcurrents in the tonier salons of Berlin and Paris and Brussels. It's really very sad.

Here is a comment I made about Moore back in November '04. Since writing that I had taken to toting around a 52 page scene by scenerebuttal of Farenheit 911. The situation becomes utterly ludicrous, the locals believe the movie must be true because Moore is not sued for libel. You can explain NY Times vs. Sullivan until you dispair but you will only be disbelieved. Here is my old comment:

The new Republican reality: no policy is too right-wing (Liberal Hysteria Warning!)
Posted by nathanbedford to TexasGreg
On News/Activism 11/14/2004 4:05:30 AM EST · 16 of 24

This is a prose version of Fahrenheit 911 and to most readers of this thread this is not alarming because there is evidence to support the view that Moore's antics backfired on Kerry and, anyway, there are plenty of sane voices to counter this nonsense in the marketplace of ideas.

Alas, one can not be so sanguine here in Europe where experience shows the massive moral damage done by Moore's film. Indeed, the man on the street here in Germany often obtains his entire Weltanschauung, or at least his view of America, from Fahrenheit 911 and there is virtually no popular organ of truth available to put the lie to such propaganda.

I have no doubt that a version of this piece, translated into the tongues of the continent, will ultimately gain wide and uncontested currency here and, in only a matter of days thereafter, I will be confronted with a half truth from this piece as though it were the very Gospel Europeans now otherwise despise.

Where is talk radio? Where is the DeutscheFreeRepublic? I visit my local bookstore and find 20 anti Bush books prominently displayed with nary a pro-America response to delight the thirsty mind. America is already paying a huge price for this knave, Michael Moore and now I fear the deluge.

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