Our mainstream press is virulently anti-Bush/and on most days, anti-American, and from all accounts, the European press runs along those lines. Certainly the world's superpower is disliked by some, and rightfully so. (Why do you think most of the US despises the New York Yankees aqnd took such delight in the Red Sox winning the recent World Series!)Some of us here are closet isolationists, dragged kicking and screaming into this brave new world of globalisation. We want to be left alone, to live our lives, raise our kids, play with our dogs, etc.. We don't sit around nights wondering how to rule the world, or even to remake it in our image...well, perhaps the Council on Foreign Relations does, but not the average man in the street.
Sadly, though, the Middle East and certain murderous crackpots therein forced us to take preemptive action. Whether first in Iraq or Syria after Afghanistan, it hardly matters. That famous quote of rousing the sleeping tiger with the attack on Pearl Harbor is still apt.
As for individual Europeans being friendly toward Americans, I'm sure you're right, but Europeans get a daily diet of how dreadful we are from your main stream press. We're no worse nor no better than anyone else, but we have spent a good part of our GNP on national defense and technilogical military wizardry, a deliberate choice that saved Europe from most of that expense and allowed her to spend her money on other things. I read an interesting article maybe a month or so ago, by a Frenchman. Perhaps it was an editorial...lamenting the changes he saw in France, and what he saw coming because of a growing Muslim population (allowed in as guest workers and paid low wages, descriminated on, etc.), and the low birthrate for the native French. Christianity, he felt, was moribund, and since nature abhores a vacuum, Muslims and Islam were poised to take over. They'd use violence, the vote, whatever it takes to assert their theocracy upon the host country. It's going on under your own nose...much as Mexicans and anyone else who cares to migrates northward across our southern border. (And yes, we have a big problem with George Bush about this particular issue.) You/we have to decide if your/our ethnic, cultural values are worth saving. Something tips the balance, I don't know what event it will be. The Netherlands had a wake up call with Theo's grisly murder, well, two, counting that earlier killing of that minister? They're rethinking a great many things, including the fact that many Muslim immigrants refuse to assimilate.
That Frenchman I mentioned asked what it would take before France woke up. What would they do when Muslims desecrated the treasures of the Louvre because they believed them obscene? He felt that those with means would flee to Australia, New Zealand, and yes, even to the US.
I'm just one small voice here, and sadly inarticulate about things I hold dear. If you have time and the inclination, I would suggest seeking out the essays of Victor Davis Hanson, for one, an American historian -- Californian -- and grower of grapes. He says so much that makes sense, and is, of all things, a democrat.
I am also not much of a typist, sorry.
Wouldn't you know it! V.D. Hanson's NRO column was just posted here on FR a few minutes ago. Great read.