The Origins and Dangers of Anti-Americanism (What despicable, low-life reprobates we are!)

American Outlook ^ | Fall 2003 | Herbert I. London

[quidnunc]

"People denounce America for a number of reasons – none of them good."

Judging by recent newspaper accounts, one would have to conclude that anti-American sentiment is on the rise worldwide, even within the United States. Some of this sentiment is related to the war in Iraq and allegations of U.S. imperial ambition, but it also has deep philosophical and historical roots.

One strain of anti-Americanism can be traced back to utopian socialism, which has always applied a standard to American behavior that is neither realistic nor consistent with the nation’s achievements. Many utopians are “red diaper children” who were raised by left-wing parents. Others are “red rebel children” who rejected the bourgeois values of their parents. In both instances, they view the United States as the embodiment of evil. Rather than apply a standard of “seeing is believing,” the utopians rely on “believing is seeing.” Because their ideology tells them that America is evil, they see evil everywhere in America. Likewise, they can find no fault with their country of choice, be it Cuba or the former Soviet Union. One red rebel of the 1970s noted, “You don’t know what hell is like until you’ve lived in Scarsdale.” The irony of this claim was lost on him.

Similarly, acolytes of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist philosopher, contend that individualism has made America into a nation of self-interested individuals devoid of communitarian impulses. To a remarkable degree, Gramscians marched through American institutions in the latter half of the twentieth century, spreading a philosophy of group rights that resulted in the acceptance of affirmative action and other categorical forms of ethnic and racial privilege. For Gramscians, America is hopelessly flawed, a land of deep-seated racial antipathy, despite the many obvious concessions made to various racial groups in efforts to redress the wrongs of the past.

Yet another group of utopians is composed of Pelagians (named after the fifth-century Christian heretic), who maintain a belief in complete freedom of the human will to choose good or evil, and a consequent faith in the perfectibility of human beings. These utopians cannot accept the Augustinian assumption of Original Sin, which prompted, among other momentous consequences, a U.S. Constitution based on checks and balances and limits on possible acts of evil. For Pelagians, the United States promotes the worst in human behavior by assuming man’s imperfectability. The illogic of this argument is that the assumption of evil results in the creation of evil institutions.

-snip-

[The Right Stuff]

excellent and observant article. Thanks!

[MegaSilver]

Very very very very true. As a college student, this appears to be the case. Left-wing students, fortunately, can't afflict much damage beyond individual votes. People like me are considered evil sell-out Nazis.

Side note: funny how they say there's no media bias, yet newspapers only use the term "leftist" or "left-wing" when referring to full-blown Marxism. "Right-winger" and "right-wing," on the other hand, are routinely used to describe not only Nazis and Fascists but Republicans, conservatives, so-called "neo-conservatives," and, if memory serves me right, sometimes even libertarians.

[xJones]

The absolute irony in all of this is that the self-hating Americans couldn't survive without their dreadful America. Those idiot red-diaper types that tried to return to Stalin's Russia were shot, for instance.

[Frank_2001]

Excellent article!

[weegee]

Thanks for posting this, I read the excerpt and will read the rest later. Looks good.

[mrustow]

Good article. My only disagreement with the author is over his description of leftist university profs as "utopians." I see almost all of them as purely negative -- anti-American -- rather than pro-anything.

More than two years after the September 11 attacks, patriotism in the United States appears to be at an all-time high. The utopians haven’t disappeared, as attendance at most American university lectures will confirm, but it is also clear that respect for America’s military personnel, as representatives of the nation’s will, has reached a peak for this post-Vietnam War period, something the antiwar activists of the 1970s would never have imagined possible.

[neverdem]

Pretty good article, but you should have warned that it was too short. Just kidding! Thanks for posting it.