The World Doesn't Hate America; The Left Does (Dennis Prager On Leftist Anti-Americanism Alert)

One of the most widely held beliefs in the contemporary world -- so widely held it is not disputed -- is that, with few exceptions, the world hates America. One of the Democrats' major accusations against the Bush administration is that it has increased hatred of America to unprecedented levels. And in many polls, the United States is held to be among the greatest obstacles to world peace and harmony.

But it is not true that the world hates America. It is the world's Left that hates America. However, because the Left dominates the world's news media and because most people, understandably, believe what the news media report, many people, including Americans, believe that the world hates America.

That it is the Left -- and those influenced by the Left-leaning news and entertainment media -- that hates America can be easily shown.

Take Western Europe, which is widely regarded as holding America in contempt, but upon examination only validates our thesis. The French, for example, are regarded as particularly America-hating, but if this were so, how does one explain the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France? Sarkozy loves America and was known to love America when he ran for president. Evidently, it is the Left in France -- a Left that, like the Left in America, dominates the media, arts, universities and unions -- that hates the U.S., not the French.

The same holds true for Spain, Australia, Britain, Latin America and elsewhere. The Left in these countries hate the United States while non-Leftists, and especially conservatives, in those countries hold America in high regard, if not actually love it.

Take Spain. The Prime Minister Of Spain from 1996 to 2004, Jose Maria Aznar, is a conservative who holds America in the highest regard. He was elected twice, and polls in Spain up to the week before the 2004 election all predicted a third term for Aznar's party (Aznar had promised not to run for a third term). Only the Madrid subway bombings, perpetrated by Muslim terrorists three days before the elections, but which the Aznar government erroneously blamed on Basque separatists, turned the election against the conservative party.

There is another obvious argument against the belief that the world hates America: Many millions of people would rather live in America than in any other country. How does the Left explain this? Why would people want to come to a country they loathe? Why don't people want to live in Sweden or France as much as they wish to live in America? Those are rich and free countries, too.

The answer is that most people know there is no country in the world more accepting of strangers as is America. After three generations, people who have emigrated to Germany or France or Sweden do not feel -- and are not regarded as -- fully German, French or Swedish. Yet, anyone of any color from any country is regarded as American the moment he or she identifies as one. The country that the Left routinely calls "xenophobic" and "racist" is in fact the least racist and xenophobic country in the world.

Given that it is the Left and the institutions it dominates -- universities, media (other than talk radio in America) and unions -- that hate America, two questions remain: Why does the Left hate America, and does the American Left, too, hate America?

The answer to the first question is that America and especially the most hated parts of America -- conservatives, religious conservatives in particular -- are the greatest obstacles to Leftist dominance. American success refutes the socialist ideals of the Left; American use of force to vanquish evil refutes the Left's pacifist tendencies; America is the last great country that believes in putting some murderers to death, something that is anathema to the Left; when America is governed by conservatives, it uses the language of good and evil, language regarded by the Left as "Manichean"; most Americans still believe in the Judeo-Christian value system, another target of the Left because the Left regards all religions as equally valid (or more to the point, equally foolish and dangerous) and regards God-based morality as the moral equivalent of alchemy.

It makes perfect sense that the Left around the world loathes America. The final question, then, is whether this loathing of America is characteristic of the American Left as well. The answer is that the American Left hates the America that believes in American Exceptionalism, is prepared to use force to fight what it deems as dangerous evil, affirms the Judeo-Christian value system, believes in the death penalty, supports male-female marriage, rejects big government, wants lower taxes, prefers free market to governmental solutions, etc. The American Left, like the rest of the world's Left, loathes that America.

So what America does the American Left love? That is for those on the Left to answer. But given their beliefs that America was founded by racists and slaveholders, that it is an imperialist nation, that 35 million Americans go hungry, that it invades countries for corporate profits, and that it is largely racist and xenophobic, it is a fair question.

My take on it is that America is a country that has managed to preserve its freedom and limited form of government against great odds for two centuries. The idea of American liberalism historically has been to fight against the expansion of the state and to maximize individual freedom. Its modern collectivist form is an import from Europe and is alien to the received understanding of American political culture. American conservatives are really old line American liberals. We are the true liberals because we understand liberalism is really about expanding and maintaining our God-given human freedom rather than looking to the state to solve all our problems. That is American Exceptionalism writ large. The European Left cannot understand why Americans do not see government as a source of happiness and so they hate America for not joining the worldwide trend to make the state the sum of all things.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

He’s accurate but there are other forces at work as well which sway some even on the right in Europe as well as Asia to have some anti-American undertones.

(Historical baggage)
When you pound a nation in WWII into the ground, as we did the Germans, despite their denial today, there still are some hard feelings that bubble up. Coincidence that the topic Dreded periodically is MSM news to them? Even though they started the war, started the bombing of civilian targets in Great Britain, and we were extremely benevolent while they were near ruthless occupiers bringing the Einsatzgruppen with them into every conquered space, there remain feelings about those B17 and B24 bomber formations pounding them.

(Envy)
Envy is earned someone once said. Everyone wants to be number one, but when you have any dealings with the US others are almost always operating from a second tier position. We are the leader of NATO, we created the UN, we define global trade today. From our economy with a volume five times that of Germany, the largest EU economy, more than twice that of Japan, the second largest global economy; to our near unparalleled capabilities in defense or even the dominance of US culture, it is simply annoying for some that we are on the horse, and they would love to see us fall, just because we are up there, even though we are an inclusive society, spreading democracy, benevolent, transparent etc. Some out of shear envy would like to see us bleed or be damaged and often those people are even on the political right. Do you think there might be a reason why a cancer patient Lance Armstrong is spat upon in France? Why by law in France they restrict foreign made radio and television programming?

(The call for action: 911) – The one that fueled much of this today
The US after 911 called for help and more or less said “$hit or get off the pot.” Many of our allies decided to get off the pot. The US is prodding, pushing along, at times nearly coercing others to do something that should be coming of free will. Many nations, and unfortunately Germany is an example, simply want to mooch but do nothing anywhere, ever. May it be pirates off the coast of Somalia, the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, and even Afghanistan, they are being pulled along and anything they do is nearly pressured out of them. Us pushing causes rejection by them. Like an older kid living at home, they don’t want to do anything if allowed to get away with it. Like parents who push these kids to sweep, mow the lawn, do their own laundry, or take out the trash, Germany points the finger at us and cries how bad they have it and how evil we actually are. Austria is another example and they even try to mooch off other European states. They don’t want to do anything, even though their little rear was bordering on a nation that imploded in the 90s that set off a humanitarian crisis with refugees etc. They would ideally claim “neutrality” even though that’s complete nonsense. They would like to do nothing while others clean up the Balkans or deal with people who executed dissidents in Vienna in 1982 and today are generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (Iran). They also don’t want to pay for missile defense, nor do they want to do anything about pirates that attacked five ships in one week off the coast of Somalia. Unlike their larger German counterpart who also tries to do as little as possible, they can hide and stay off the radar screen very well because of the histroical context of their nation, while Germany the third largest economy globally and largest within Europe can’t completely dodge the bullet as they can. If you push them, the reply is ALWAYS the same. They will feed you pre-canned moral relativistic gibberish as a justification for why we are only taking action to serve ourselves, our so called “interests” (Something DeGaulle liked to talk about), why it is morally the high ground to be neutral, and of course as we saw with Iraq, they are full of Schadenfreude sitting back and after the fact try to rationalize their inaction with our blood sweat and tears. And that’s not only on the left; that even includes many on the right!

(Ideology)
What Dennis Praeger talks about is the ideological gap which also exists even within the US as it does between the US and Europe. Europe is far more secular, far more socialist, and yes far more nihilist than we are. You see this with capital punishment as he suggests and our view of personal culpability, their dying churches which are only frequented by the old and sick, elections that place into limited power political parties that in part are hard line communists in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. What Praeger addresses is very true, but it’s only a single aspect and it looks predominantly at the left, explaining their behavior. However, you’ll see even some on the right who more or less despise us, and they are usually full of envy and rejection for us having pushed them along when they would rather do nothing and simply watch as we tangle with AQ, rouge states, and a generally volatile Middle East. I think he’s completely correct and he hit the ideological points of contention, but he’s incomplete in that there is historical baggage, envy, and simply a resistance to our call for action following 911 that is also at play.

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