Christopher Hitchens: This July Fourth, ignore polls on America’s image

The Examiner ^ | July 4, 2006 | Christopher Hitchens

[beaversmom]

It's the same with the Jews. When they are being shoved into ovens, there is some sympathy. When they fight back, very few will give them the time of day.

[lilylangtree]

Consider the source of any and all org's conducting polls and what their hidden agenda is. Don't give a rip what the rest of the world says. Their liberal leftist media like the BBC and others want to down American much like our media at home. To h*ll with them.

[GVnana]

A very important poll in Iran (where polling is illegal) found that a huge majority of Iranians considered better relations with America to be the single most urgent priority. One of those who conducted the survey was a former American embassy hostage-taker, who was jailed for publishing his findings.

Thank you Mr. Hitchens for telling the truth.

[phillyfanatic]

Though Hitch doesn't believe in God, Thank God for his wisdom and concrete common sense when it comes to analysing true American concerns and facts.

[aculeus]

BTTT

[Blue State Insurgent]

Here's the poll:

http://www.pressreleases.be/script_UK/newsdetail.asp?nDays=d&ID=27152

[GVnana]

A recent public opinion survey of Iranians, conducted by The Tarrance Group, surprisingly found that a vast majority (74%) of Iranians feel America's presence in the Middle East will increase the probability of democracy in their own country. The survey, which was the first of its kind, found two-thirds of Iranians believe that regime change in Iraq has been a positive for both neighboring countries: with 66% believing that it served Iran's national interests, while 65% believed the Iraqi people will, in the long-run, be better off.

Wow.

[ozzymandus]

I always ignore anti-American polls. As soon as the foriegn countries want something, they'll come begging again.

[Christian4Bush]

bttt

[DakotaRed]

Ignore them today? Hell, I ignore them everyday, LOL.

[radiohead]

Great post. I'm going to send this to some of my Euroweenie friends who need a little smacking around this July 4th.

[Malesherbes]

The Pew Center. Pronounced like it is spelled.

[WOSG]

"Isn't the Pew Center the same organization that convinced congress that the #1 subject on the minds of Americans was campaign finance reform, and then later admitted that they had rigged the polling and the results that saddled us with McCain/Feingold CFR?"

Yes.

Let me guess, their next project is to sign over our rights, sovereignty and first-born to the UN.

[WOSG]

Bitter, envious people (especially the global left) hates America they way most people hate a rich neighbor who goes around being blatantly happier than they are.

Happy Independence Day!

[2nd Bn, 11th Mar]

Never had a very high opinion of a culture that used their thumb instead of toilet paper.

[5Madman2]

I concur

[Billthedrill]

An old debate, sharpened by the intensity of feeling that results from many European intellectuals' dismay that the world isn't progressing in the direction their Marxian tarot cards predicted during their glory years at university. Had it not been the United States, had it been, say, Brazil who emerged from WWII with a dominant geopolitical and economic position, you may rest assured that the papers in Paris, Berlin, and London would be outraged at Brazilian hegemony and the campuses and coffee-houses pontificating on the imperialists of Brasilia, assuming that the Brazilians hadn't nuked them in exasperation by now.

So some of this is, IMHO, a result of natural envy, some of it resentment against power that is only imagined (it is, after all, the French and not the Americans who are building McDonalds in Paris) and some of it the result of decades of the cleverest and best-funded propaganda on the part of the inveterate enemy of the United States, the Soviet Union.

Persons unwilling to make the intellectual effort often tend to revert to a political shorthand positing that all power is equally oppressive and hence equally evil and that its holders are indistinguishable from one another. It is difficult not to suspect that on the part of ex-colonial Europeans this tendency to view the United States as a hegemon striving for empire is based not only on what they'd do in our place, but what they actually did do. It is not only cynicism that denies that we might have something else in mind, it is also willful ignorance.

In any case I number myself in the "no longer care" portion of the population. You beat a horse with a stick often enough and he loses interest in the carrot.

Happy Independence Day, all! Let freedom ring!

[LibertarianInExile]

"I'd rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than King, Queen, and Jack of all you Europeans."

P.J. kicks ass.

[Lawgvr1955]

Love PJ. My other favorite of his is "Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teen age boys".

[Pajamajan]

"I would suggest less masochism, more confidence on the American street"

Excellent.

Who-gives-a-flying-flip-about-polls- BUMP.