It is almost impossible to overstate the degree of leftist "intellectual rot" which contaminates old Europe. This "rot" is the proximate result, not of uninformed or sloppy thinking but of generations of relentless leftist propaganda which now dominates public and private discourse in Europe. I can testify to this unhappy reality from my experience of living in Germany for more than 15 years.
Yes, an appalling percentage of the population trades in conspiracy theory. That is, many believe that either "the Jews" or the Americans themselves were complicit in the 9/11 strike on the homeland. Years ago, I recited on these threads an anecdote which occurred on a train in which German college aged kids from the recently liberated former East Germany hissed venomously, "ich hasse Amerika" (I hate America). The anecdotal evidence is endless, for example, a highly educated psychiatrist, a neighbor, insists that the world was safer when America's power was counterbalanced by the Soviet Union. The mindless faith in eliminating terrorism by getting at the root causes of poverty which allegedly spawns it. The blaming of President Bush for hurricanes. The adulation of Bill Clinton.
In September I was traveling through Moscow on a bus with 39 German businessmen and journalists when we passed a statue of Lenin. I remarked to my seat companion, an extremely left-wing pony-tailed journalist, that the specter of this statute to Lenin drew not the slightest response from the Germans aboard the bus but one could have no doubt of the petulant reaction which would arise if the statue were of George Bush.
The anti-Americanism which infects Germany is malignant and pervasive and, unfortunately, the institutions are not in place which would ordinarily offer hope that the situation can be redressed. Imagine that you are living in a red state with no access to blue state thinking and you have a rough approximation of the politically correct climate in Germany. Enter a bookstore in Germany and you will find countless works bashing America and especially bashing George Bush but it is a rare find to discover a book which supports the United States.
We all know that the institutions such as the press and the Academy are structured to force thinking in opposition to America and to keep it there. My children returning home from school recite how the teacher praised Che Guevera as a liberator. But other institutions subtly reinforce this tendency. For example, in Europe and especially in Germany, public figures can, and indeed are expected to sue for libel if they are falsely maligned. Thus, the typical German believes that everything Michael Moore says and shows him in Fahrenheit 9/11 is the truth, else Moore's victims would have brought an action against him for libel.
Normally, this situation could be at least addressed by a president who knows how to use the bully pulpit but, unfortunately, George Bush is one of the most inarticulate presidents and American history and can only speak to the world effectively what he does so from a prepared text(I am not unmindful of his ad Lib with the bullhorn-a brilliant exception). Bush's rope a dope strategy has brought adverse consequences in Europe as well as in America, in Europe for America as a whole, and in America, for the fortunes of the Republican Party. When the world accepted that there were no weapons of mass distraction in Iraq, the administration and, by extension, America was confronted by a wall of cynicism which could only have been scaled by the most articulate and persistent advocacy. Regrettably, this is been lacking, especially since the election.
Believe me, Chancellor Merckle has shown great courage in publicly effecting a rapprochement with America. She came within an eyelash of losing the election to an otherwise discredited anti-American demagogue who owed most of his popularity to his craven readiness to pander to the European left by bashing America.
Finally, it goes without saying that American Democrats have shown themselves to be as demagogic as Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder when they travel abroad.I for one believe that this shameless pandering to the European left (which probably represents 80% of Europe) by our Democrat politicians represents more than just cheap and easy whoring after approval. It is nothing less than a manifestation of the desire to wed the blue states (of course with the red states in train) and and the European Union into a super-national one world government. It is this ambition which animates the hatred of America in the intellectual left in both Europe and here: These people see the United States as the principal obstacle to the achievement of one world government.
When the world came to believe that no weapons of mass distraction were in Iraq, the left here and in Europe saw its opportunity and seized it with both fists.
