Posted on 01/10/2006 6:48:48 AM PST by dukeman
"Democracy may, after all, turn out to have been a historical accident, a brief parenthesis that is closing before our eyes." With those words, French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel sounded an alarm as the ramparts of democratic conviction were under attack by the political left. Revel, one of the most important conservative thinkers in France, saw European intellectuals and the political left in America undermining the very foundations of democracy.
"Democracy tends to ignore, even deny, threats to its existence because it loathes doing what is needed to counter them," explained Revel. "It awakens only when the danger becomes deadly, imminent, evident. By then, either there is too little time left for it to save itself, or the price of survival has become crushingly high."
To any insightful observer of the European scene in the early 1980s, Revel's analysis was prophetic. Leftist intellectuals were pointing to the United States as the source of all oppression in the world, while praising the Soviet Union as the liberator of human kind. In How Democracies Perish, Revel aimed his sights at the self-destructive hypocrisies of liberal thought. As he knew, the very intellectuals who should have been supporting the United States were instead hoping for its downfall. "What we end up with in what is conventionally called Western society is a topsy-turvy situation in which those seeking to destroy democracy appear to be fighting for legitimate aims, while its defenders are pictured as repressive reactionaries."
As Revel lamented, at times the democracies seemed to find strange comfort in calls for their own destruction. As he observed, "Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another is power is working to destroy it." Were democracies doomed to self-destruct?
Jean-Francois Revel is well known as a shining light of reason in the French academy. Long a columnist, editor, and director of L'Express, Revel is also the author of a multi-volume history of philosophy. He sprang to Western attention with the publication of his controversial book, Without Marx or Jesus. Revel's later volumes would include The Totalitarian Temptation and Democracy Against Itself.
Throughout his career, Revel has been known as a stalwart defender of democracy. He does not take this matter lightly, for he understands all too well that the basic structure of government determines the achievement or loss of human freedom within a society. In Democracy Against Itself, Revel argued that "every society which has worked more or less well, which achieved any sort of viability, and which produced civilizations men found tolerable, have been--or are--societies that in some sense are democratic."
Of course, the alarm sounded by Revel in How Democracies Perish was overtaken by history with the fall of the Soviet Union and the remarkable events of 1989 and 1990. As Revel later reflected, the good news revealed in the fall of the Soviet Union was the fact that its internal weaknesses were even greater than the self-hatred of the secular left in Western democracies.
Now, twenty years after How Democracies Perish, Revel looks to the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks and asks the fundamental question: Why do so many Europeans hate America?
This is not a question of merely academic interest. Revel senses that something fundamental is revealed in the way the European Left has responded to America's status as the world's only super power.
Revel is blunt. The ascendancy of the United States, set over against the relative decline of Europe, has given birth to an intense hatred in some European corridors. Most particularly, Revel locates the root of this poisonous anti-Americanism in France. As he comments, "It is in France that this loss--real or imaginary--of great-power status engenders the most bitterness."
The virulent anti-Americanism that erupted on the streets of Europe in the aftermath of America's military action in Afghanistan and Iraq did not emerge from a vacuum. Revel's interest in anti-Americanism is rooted in his own experience as an French intellectual who actually visited the United States. When Revel first visited America in 1969, he discovered a land very different from what he expected. Having planned to write a book on the problems of the United States, Revel instead wrote a treatise criticizing the irrational anti-Americanism of the European Left. Now, he has done it again--and this new book may be even more important.
In Anti-Americanism, just released by Encounter Books, Revel considers this toxic pattern of European hatred towards the United States. He identifies one core issue as a sense of European loss. Revel cites Hubert Vedrine, the French minister of foreign affairs, who rejected the word "superpower", and instead substituted a term of his own invention: "hyperpower."
As Revel notes, since the Greek prefix "hyper" has exactly the same meaning as the Latin "super," Mr. Vedrine is merely seeking to score political capital in his own nation and in the larger European neighborhood. As Vedrine stated, "We cannot except a politically unipolar and culturally homogenized world, any more than the unilateralism of the single hyperpower." Exactly what Mr. Vedrine meant by this, no one seems to know. Nevertheless, it is an example of French hyperventilation posing as foreign policy.
Revel sees the problem as much worse than hyperbole. If America is dominant, Revel asks, then why is this so? He will not allow Europeans off the hook. "Europeans in particular should force themselves to examine how they have contributed to that preponderance. It was they, after all, who made the twenty century the darkest in history; it was they who brought about the two unprecedented cataclysms of the World Wars; and it was they who invented and put into place the two most criminal regimes ever inflicted on the human race--pinnacles of evil and imbecility achieved in a space of less than thirty years."
The United States is far from perfect, Revel acknowledges. Nevertheless, he suggests that any criticisms should be directed at real problems, and should not take the form of irrational rantings.
According to Revel, the European Left enjoys its fantasy of America as "the worst society that ever was." According to this cartoon of reality, America is a society that is entirely under the control of money-grubbing plutocrats. Everything is for sale and the entire culture has been commodified. The problem is not just George W. Bush, for the European Left is convinced that every recent American president "has been in the pockets of the oil companies, the military-industrial complex, the agricultural lobby or the financial manipulators of Wall Street." But, in the French view, George W. Bush is just the worst of the lot--at least as yet.
The European Left is also convinced that America is primarily marked by poverty. As Revel describes the Leftist fantasy: "Hordes of famished indigents are everywhere, while luxurious chauffeured limousines with darkened windows glide through the urban wilderness." These same thinkers are convinced that violence reigns throughout the United States, and that gunshots commonly ring through even the most peaceable neighborhoods. As Revel acknowledges, European rants about America's lax gun laws would have more credibility if the same weapons were not easily available for purchase through the black market in virtually every European city.
If this picture of America is true, the pattern of immigration from Europe to the United States throughout the twentieth century was absolutely irrational. "If the picture of American society drawn everyday by the European press is accurate, then we must believe that those tens of millions of immigrants from all parts of the world, and especially those who came from Europe between 1850 and 1924, were all deluded fools. Otherwise, why did they insist on staying in the American capitalist jungle with all its evils and not return to the lands of peace, plenty, and liberty they came from? Lost in a hellish cultural wasteland, why at least didn't they write to their families and relations basking in the paradises of Ukraine, Calabria and Greece warning them not to come to America?" Clearly, Revel does not mince words.
This virulent anti-Americanism is not a matter of mere sociological interest. As Revel understands, this explains why the United Nations Security Council has become so ineffectual and why the United States has been forced to act unilaterally. As he explains, "Europeans' voluntary blindness with regard to these radical changes renders any American attempts at dialogue fruitless; as a result, America has no other option but to make unilateral decisions. How can you discuss a problem with people who deny its very existence?"
Jean-Francois Revel is a brave man who has lived through some of the most tumultuous decades of human history. Though a realist, he is not without hope. He has sounded the alarm more than once, only to have the Left ignore his cries. Anti-Americanism is Revel's latest attempt to call the trendsetting intellectuals of Europe back to sanity. Good luck, Professor Revel. This is no easy task.
Revel's prescient warning to the European Left should also serve to educate thoughtful Americans about the challenge we face in Europe, which may be as daunting a challenge as that posed by Islamic terrorism. Something sick lies at the heart of Western civilization. The democracies that will surely perish will be those who cannot tell the difference between good and evil, survival and ruin, freedom and tyranny. Or, perhaps more to the point, the greatest danger faced by democracy are those who deny that there is any real difference after all.
Revel is one Frenchman I respect.
You are mostly spot-on but I must disagree with your last point. They do know what Customer Service means, only to them it is like an oxymoron. When you are the customer you are an A-hole because you distract them from more important things like worrying about health care and holidays. And they know how to service their back side.
Or a Prefecture of Imperial Japan.
Europeans don't hate Americans. They just think they and their socialism is better than our government. Our press has maligned our industry and government so much that the Europeans just buy it. After all, that is all they get from our papers.
They don't questions posed to them like: Health Care costs so much more in Europe than in America, why isn't European health care better than Americas? Why are taxes in Europe so much higher than in America?
They don't like those kinds of questions because it would undermine their comfy "Cradle to the Grave" socialism and the freedoms they don't have.
When Politicians start talking about having taxes like in Europe - Shout out "You mean like 80% taxation"! When they start in on wonderful European Healthcare - "You mean someone else chooses my doctor and I can wait until I croak for care!".
IMO France and many other EU countries hate us because we're not even close to being as socialist as they are, and we're thriving because of it. Europe ~ Lose the communist/socialist mentality, I bet you'll like what comes out of it.
Never discount the primary fact that many people hate other people simply because they are different...or are perceived as being different. Xenophobia is a global phenomenon. That and the fact that nobody likes Number One and you have the genesis of much of the anti-American sentiment. A third ingredient in the toxic anti-Yankee stew is the Marxist mindset of many of the most rabid haters. The religion of Marxism died and they hate that capitalism killed it. We exemplify capitalism. So all this virulent hatred is not hard to understand.
"What's the main difference between a Russian and an American? An American passionately and with all his soul loves his country and his people, and is offended when any foreigner doesn't share his feelings. A Russian in the same way, with his whole soul hates his country and his people, but gets very offended when some foreigner shares his feelings..."
Actually, doesn't this describe the difference between the blue-staters and the red-staters? The liberals have the same feelings about their country as the Russians do about theirs.
Now, Now, Now.....you know full well that the 'person' you indicate as having been American born is spawn of the Devil which does not qualify as being 'American-born'.
"The United States is far from perfect, Revel acknowledges. Nevertheless, he suggests that any criticisms should be directed at real problems, and should not take the form of irrational rantings."The Left, in America and Europe, is irrational--this is the biggest problem that rational, honest, and intelligent people have in dealing with it--and therefore its arguments are reduced to nothing more than irrational rantings.
"...the European Left enjoys its fantasy of America as 'the worst society that ever was.'"Yes, and this dangerous "cartoonish fantasy" is also cherished by the American Left.
This is why the American Left is so virulently anti-American and why it serves so willingly as a fifth column for America's enemies.
And this is why the American Left has found it so easy to form an unholy alliance with fanatical, anti-American Muslims.
So delusional are these people--and so virulent is their hatred of the United States--that they prefer a future dominated by the shariah and virulent Islamic fundamentalism to the continued existence of the United States.
"Europeans' voluntary blindness...renders any American attempts at dialogue fruitless"Yes. And the voluntary blindness of the American Left renders fruitless any attempts at dialogue, by the truthful, intelligent, benevolent, and rational.
The American Left, like the European Left, is lost in a dangerous, destructive anti-American delusion, and this has made the United States--like Europe--dangerously vulnerable to enemies of liberty and democracy, notably radical Islamic fundamentalists.
"Something sick lies at the heart of Western civilization. The democracies that will surely perish will be those who cannot tell the difference between good and evil, survival and ruin, freedom and tyranny."That "something sick" is a dangerous form of decadence that has infected the American and European Left, the U.S. Democrat Party, and the so-called "Liberal" enclaves of America (there is nothing liberal about them). It is a delusion. It serves the purposes of America's most dangerous enemies.
I have this book, it has been out for a while. Just after Sep 11, if memory serves.
Revel really makes his point when he shows that the left believes both "X" and "not X" at the same time, seeing no inconsistency in this; two irreconcilable ideas lashed together by hatred of America.
Yes, but what? If you review the charges, you will find they are exactly those leveled by the philosophers of fascism. If you review European intellectual life, you will find it is saturated with German philosophy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If you scratch a postmodernist, you will find Heidegger.
It was all comprehensively smashed at the level of political reality. It was not defeated at the level of philosophic thought. In the US, it can seem incredible that any of it even needs defeating. But it does. The underlying ailment is not in the domain of politics but in that of thought, and the symptoms will recur as long as that remains.
The same, incidentally, is true of our Islamic opponents.
It is necessary to engage at the level of sincere philosophic thought, not mere polemic and ideology, let alone mere politics. And you don't engage with flip dismissals, pretending it can't matter because you don't agree with it. It must be fully understood, its psychic causes sympathetically diagnosed, and answered. Not with admonitions or lectures directed at changing others, but with testimony about the reality of human experience freely offered to the world at large.
I believe that is fully possible. But it has not happened. All the critiques of the core of modern European thought are ideological or shallow, or both. Yes that thought is diseased. But the things being peddled as cures are not directly at the actual problem, but are just panaceas being peddling by the usual suspect sects.
marker
Hmmmmm good..... and lets not forget taking time away from their cell phones or causing them to do something that actually takes ANY effort....
You're right -- too many people continue to see all that as a good idea.
European anti-Americanism is especially galling to Americans because it's like having your own brother knife you in the back. America's relationsip with Europe is more familiar than America's relationship with other countries. One effect of this is that the world listens to European opinion of America when the world forms its own opinion of America. After all, if you want to know something about someone, who better to listen to than his brother?
I witnessed this firsthand recently when speaking with a Chinese graduate student who had just come to America. On his way here, he travelled through Europe and spoke with Europeans about America. They filled his head with all kinds of scary tales and warnings about what America was like. Thanks to the anti-American propaganda that's common in China, he already had bad ideas about the United States, and the Europeans reinforced those bad ideas.
The moral of the story is that Europe is promoting anti-Americanism in the world -- which makes it look a little hypocritical for Europe to justify its own anti-Americanism by saying "well, the world hates America, not just us".
Canada as an example is completely ok.
Canada has a leftwing government and social-welfare model that is similar in many ways to Europe. Canada also has a strong streak of anti-Americanism. There is much that Europe and Canada agree on, so it's not surprising that you would find Canada completely ok.
And if something is hated, than it's not the US itself. Blue Jeans, Country Music, Star Trek and Burgers are fine !
But these things are bits of cultural ephemera, not the US itelf, not anything essential. The US itself is characterized by a unique orientation towards individual liberty, limited government, free markets, competitiveness, excellence, and uncoerced goodness and charity. It's these things that Europe hates.
The EU has it's problems with the US American conservatives.
Naturally, because it's American conservatives who are most interested in preserving the things I mentioned above, the things which Europe hates.
That's the guys running around and asking people not to interact with europeans because they hate America.
The root problem here is that Europeans hate America (not all of them, but many of them). They hate America for the reasons that Jean-Francois Revel writes of. Conservatives merely point this hatred out to people.
Victor Davis Hanson has written several times recently that Europe has lost the good will of most Americans, and I can tell you that he's correct. There has been a distinct shift. I don't think you guys are aware of much Europe has fallen out of favor with the average American over the past four years or so. 9/11 and especially the Iraq war has shown people, even people who don't agree with the war, what a troublesome friend Europe is for us. Their eyes have been opened to the anti-Americanism that Revel has written of since the mid 1980's. This loss of goodwill towards Europe is in response to something that's been part of Europe for a long time. The root problem is yours, not ours.
Is there more to the story? I love to hear the impressions of people who are discovering a new culture (especially ours). Was the student surprised by his experiences in America or hasn't enough time passed?
except maybe the sonar systems of the 688 attac sub class, the 120mm cannon of the m1, optics for missiles, carbon fiber compounds, high tec ceramics, the heckler and koch MP5, leupold optics for sniper rifles, etc but who needs this martial crap anyhow.
chrysler beeing the only 'US American' car maker to plan to expand capacities - since it's german led it works out....
there's billions of examples and if the links are cut the US and certainly to a higher degree the EU economy wouldn't work - but hey - you US guys could do more trade with china - I bet they are kinda more friendly (always smiling).
yeah right I bet you would be better of without these high tec imports and the 10% of the capital coming into your country from muslim countries.
I am not saying we Eu folks would be better of without close relationshsips to the US - noone over here says so.
What I read - espacially in these threads, is that you folks don't care about it much plus you don't like the united nations as such - russia isn't cool either - china is a threat and if you pray to allah you're certainly an enemy...
But there sure is a lot of anti americanism in europe...
At the time I spoke with him (this past September), he had just begun his first semester here. We talked more about political stuff than his personal experiences in America, so I don't have much to tell you about that. But I did pick up a few things from him that were interesting. I don't know how representative he is of most Chinese, but if he is, then 1) The Chinese feel threatened by the United States, but they don't have a deep historical sense of enmity towards the US like they do with Russia and Japan. Their feelings towards the US are very mixed. 2) The Chinese are comfortable with having an authoritarian government. They feel it's a good fit for their culture. It's not so much the socialism in communism that appeals to them but the authoritarianism in it.
And of course as I said before, the Europeans had downloaded the full suite of leftist anti-American junk into his head, so he was full of conspiracy theories about George Bush and Iraq and all that. He had a thousand and one questions for me -- I think I was the first Republican he had had a chance to speak with -- like, did I really think we were doing this to spread freedom and not just for oil? And does George Bush really mean it when he talks about democracy in his speeches?
I think I may have made some headway with him. He seemed to accept my answers without much dispute even though they flatly contradicted the premises of his questions. We were working in the same area that day and he was really quiet and pensive after we spoke. My sense was that I had managed to plant some doubt into his mind and that he was mulling things over. I can imagine him weighing the words of the Europeans against what I said. If there's a followup conversation, it should be interesting.
I esepcially like his insight here: "Europeans in particular should force themselves to examine how they have contributed to that preponderance. It was they, after all, who made the twenty century the darkest in history; it was they who brought about the two unprecedented cataclysms of the World Wars; and it was they who invented and put into place the two most criminal regimes ever inflicted on the human race--pinnacles of evil and imbecility achieved in a space of less than thirty years"
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