Posted on 11/02/2005 5:14:35 PM PST by Reform Canada
Current Events Anti-Americanism Is Racist Envy Paul Johnson, 07.21.03, 12:00 AM ET
Anti-Americanism is the prevailing disease of intellectuals today. Like other diseases, it doesn't have to be logical or rational. But, like other diseases, it has a syndrome--a concurrent set of underlying symptoms that are also causes.
• First, an unadmitted contempt for democracy. The U.S. is the world's most successful democracy. The right of voters to elect more than 80,000 public officials, the length and thoroughness of electoral campaigns, the pervasiveness of the media and the almost daily reports by opinion polls ensure that government and electorate do not diverge for long and that Washington generally reflects the majority opinion in its actions.
It is this feature that intellectuals--especially in Europe--find embittering. They know they must genuflect to democracy as a system. They cannot openly admit that an entire people--especially one comprising nearly 300 million, who enjoy all the freedoms--can be mistaken. But in their hearts these intellectuals do not accept the principle of one person, one vote. They scornfully, if privately, reject the notion that a farmer in Kansas, a miner in Pennsylvania or an auto assembler in Michigan can carry as much social and moral weight as they do. In fact, they have a special derogatory word for anyone who acts on this assumption: "populist." A populist is someone who accepts the people's verdict, even--and especially--when it runs counter to the intellectual consensus (as with capital punishment, for example). In the jargon of intellectual persiflage, populism is almost as bad as fascism--indeed, it's a step toward it. Hence, the argument goes, the U.S. is not so much an "educated democracy" as it is a media-swayed and interest-group-controlled populist regime.
The truth is, on the European Continent there is little experience of working democracy. Italy and Germany have had democracy only since the late 1940s; Spain, since the 1960s. France is not a democracy; it is a republic run by bureaucratic and party elites, whose errors are dealt with by strikes, street riots and blockades instead of by votes. Elements of the French system are being imposed throughout the EU, even in countries such as Denmark and Sweden that have long practiced democracy with success. In a French-style pseudodemocracy, intellectuals have considerable influence, at both government and street levels. In a true democracy, intellectuals are no more powerful than their arguments.
• Second, anti-Americanism is a function of cultural racism. An astonishingly high proportion of European elites know very little about U.S. history or culture and even deny that they have a separate existence apart from their European roots. It is strange that those seeking to bring about a European federal state or union have at no stage sought to study the lessons Americans learned during the creation of the U.S. in the 1780s. After all, the U.S. Constitution (suitably amended) has lasted for more than 200 years, and within its framework the country has emerged as the richest and most powerful society in world history. You might think, therefore, that European elites would seek to learn something from such a successful process. Not at all: The view is that sophisticated, civilized Europe has nothing to learn from "adolescent" America. What these Euro-elites particularly abhor is the way in which the framers of the Constitution made every effort to involve the population through the process of public debates, town meetings and ratification votes--and this at a time when Europe was still governed (for the most part) by the absolute sovereigns of the ancien régime.
This cultural racism is particularly directed at the supposedly "know-nothing" President George W. Bush and his "gung ho" Texas background. The European intelligentsia gets its notion of America chiefly from Hollywood, TV soaps like Dallas and fiction. Few of them have any experience of America, outside of three or four big cities. Middle America is unexplored territory. The fact that the U.S. has proved a highly efficient crucible for melding different peoples into a human sum greater than its constituent parts is seen as a misfortune in Europe because it produces a cultural stew that lacks purity of any kind and is therefore at the mercy of commercial forces.
• Third, European elites tend to look at Americans as a subcivilized mass, whose function is to be obedient consumers in a system run by big business. The role of competition in U.S. economic life--and in every other aspect of life--is ignored, because competition is something Continental Europeans like to keep to a minimum and under careful control.
Although Americans are seen as highly materialistic consumers, they are also despised and feared for their spiritual interests, their participation in religious worship and their subscription to creeds of morality. Europeans see no inconsistency in their condemnation of the U.S. for being at one and the same time paganly unethical and morally zealous.
The truth is, any accusation that comes to hand is used without scruple by the Old World intelligentsia. Anti-Americanism is factually absurd, contradictory, racist, crude, childish, self-defeating and, at bottom, nonsensical. It is based on the powerful but irrational impulse of envy--an envy of American wealth, power, success and determination. It is an envy made all the more poisonous because of a fearful European conviction that America's strength is rising while Europe's is falling.
Being a turd is an awful way to waste a lfe.
Great article regarding "Euro-Peon" attitudes.
From claret to concubinage, there was no delight he did not sample, or rather indulge in habitually. (p. 242)Why does anyone pay any attention to what this guy says?So Jefferson's wife was in intimate daily contact ... with her husband's concubine. (p. 242)
Jefferson's expensive tastes might not have proved so fatal to his principles had he not also been an amateur architect of astonishing persistence and eccentricity. (p. 244)
It is just as well that Jefferson had no sense of humor: he constitutes in his own way an egregious comic character, accident-prone and vertiginous, to whom minor catastrophes accrued. (p. 246)
As originally built his bedroom [at Monticello] accorded him no privacy at all, a curious oversight considering he had a passion for being alone and unobserved. Thereafter the search for privacy became an obsession in the many changes of design ... Contemporaries assumed they were there so his alleged mistress, Sally Hemmings, could slip in and out of his chamber unobserved. (p. 247)
(Page references to the hardcover edition of A History of the American People)
ML/NJ
I should note that I disagree with Johnson's first point. We are NOT A DEMOCRACY. Our Republican form of government protects the minority (think gun owners and fundamentalist Christians) against, what Jefferson called "the tyranny of the majority." He also tends to forget that some of the most asinine ideas of this country's history (Prohibition, the Free Silver movement, Anti-Masonic parties) were the product of Populism.
Paul Johnson tells a good story, but he is far from an accurate historian.
I don't see any problems with his observations.
'Intellectuals' = prideful baloons awaiting the inevitable burst through the pinprick of logic and faith.
Always remember, John Kerry wanted/wants this nation to be more like Europe...
In fact I enjoyed it so much I am tempted to re-enlist in the military, in hope that one day (soon) we will invade those Euro-weenies and kick those elitest scum suckers all over that polluted continent.
First we shall tune up our Euro-weenie fighting skills on the American elite, and of course the non-elite Democrat Party types before we go.
This is because you have not yet learned much about history.
Consider:
Jefferson's wife was in intimate daily contact ... with her husband's concubine.Jefferson's wife died when Sally Hemmings was not yet nine years old.
or this other quote I picked:
As originally built his bedroom [at Monticello] accorded him no privacy at all, a curious oversight considering he had a passion for being alone and unobserved. Thereafter the search for privacy became an obsession in the many changes of design ... Contemporaries assumed they were there so his alleged mistress, Sally Hemmings, could slip in and out of his chamber unobserved.and contrast it with this written by Mr. Jefferson's granddaughter in 1858:
His apartments had no private entrance not perfectly accessible and visible to all the household. No female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be there, and none could have entered without being exposed to the public gaze.Do you have other information, or has your thought been poisoned by the "All Presidents do it," stories told by the Great Stainmaker and his minions?
ML/NJ
Just for your info. We aren't a democracy. We're a republic. Athens was the only true democracy.
When you lose power (control of events) nations naturally lash out at the gaining power. I think it is more with human's tribalistic nature. Not long ago we Americans were angry at the Japanese for building better cars, steel, electronics, and accumulating more money than us. It got so bad, that we rejected the right of a Japanese businessman from buying one of our financially strapped baseball teams. We claimed that only Americans can own baseball teams (of course Canadians exempt).
Well?? - Tom
McCoullough did a good job of exposing this Sally Hemmings story for the lie it is. People are complicated and Jefferson had short comings, but Hemmings was not one of them. I find the way people carelessly bandy about this nonsense is disgusting.
I don't think Thomas Jefferson is above criticism, any more than anyone else is. He was criticized quite a bit when he was President.
bump
Do you think maybe the criticism should be intellectually honest? Ad hominem attacks, ala Johnson, just don't cut it in my book. Jefferson could be criticised for expanding the powers of the Presidency by going ahead with the Louisana Purchase for example, but isn't "an egregious comic character, accident-prone and vertiginous, to whom minor catastrophes accrued," a bit much?
ML/NJ
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
Knock off the ridiculous clinton* minions insults.
I happen to agree with his comments regarding 'anti-Americanism' in Europe.
They may not be as all inclusive as I would write, but they have a ring of truth to them.
His comments about Jefferson do not negate the validity of his article here.
And your snide comments lessen your impact.
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