WHY DO OTHER COUNTRIES HATE US?

Found this while pondering the question,why do other countries dislike us? Part of an ad in the Saturday Enening Post in 1914.

In every field of human endeavour, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or a manufactured product,emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition;the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. When a man's work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work be merely mediocre, he will be left severely alone- if he acheive a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a-wagging. Jealousy does not protrude it's forked tongue at the artist who produces a commomplace painting. Whatsoever you write,or paint, or sing, or build no one will strive to surpass, or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious continue to cry out that it can not be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him it's greatest artistic genius. Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. The leader is assailed because he is a leader and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or excel, the follower seeks to depricate and to destroy - but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant.

There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as the human passions - envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains - the leader. Master poet, masterpainter, master workman each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages. That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial That which deserves to live - lives.

The Civil war is not comparable to WWI, WWII, Vietnam War, the wars in the Mid East.

Why not?

How are:

1) a hugely signifdicant number of horried human deaths (what was the level of medical competancy in 1865?) and
2) a completely ravaged countryside (in the south) and
3) the fact that brother fought brother in a lot of cases

- completely different than WWI or WWII?

Are you referring to the simple refinement in the techniques of mechanization for killing the enemy's soldiers?

You will find, that, except for aircraft "The Civil War" poineered or introduced a lot of what was seen in those other conflicts ...

I have always felt that one of the reasons why so many other citizens of other countries hate us is that they aren't Americans. For example, One of my former bosses was a gentleman from England who spent much of his life traveling around the world before settling in the United States. One of his more interesting observations was that though the United States was the most vilified country in the world our he found that our embassy had the longest line of people trying to get permission to immigrate here.

That is one of the reason why I don't care what the rest of the world thinks about the United States. The goverments of these countries, with few examples, are staffed by stupid people who are persuing policies that are spurring their best and brightest to leave their native lands and come here to the States. A nation where freedom, equality and OPPORTUNITY allows these people to provide a BETTER life for themselves. In short, The U.S. provides people with the tools and the incentives to go out and engage in self-improvement, and largely be left alone while doing them. Most of these would be applicants would probably be dead before thirty in their native lands or locked into an endless cycle of poverty.

America is also hated because here people are free and we respect, for the most part, individual rights, duties and responsibilities. Aside from the occasional racial incident perpertrated by generally stupid people, an individual's right to persue their path in life is still, for the most part, respected, and indeed expected. In fact the guys who DON'T respect individualism are the leftists and liberals who view people thinking for themselves (and more importantly, doing for themselves), as being inherently dangerous to their cause(s). Many foreign countries are still ruled by dictators, fascists, and self-appointed "liberators" who are more interested in maintaining their own position in a society at the cost of everyone elses. This is a hard thing to do in a free society, where access to education and economic opportunity gives the individual the ability, indeed the incentive, to go out and improve himself, be it finacially, intellectually and even socially. It's very hard to be a dictator to a nation of educated people, despite the attempts of the left wing in this country (and others) to do so.

Another reason why we are hated is because of the American Media. An entity which is, unfortunately, run by this same clic of left wingers/liberals, and they are way out of control. Starting with Hollywood and ending with all the left leaning large news organizations, the media has become a major embarassment with the lies, half-truth's and vicious innuendos it spews out, with regularity, into the ether. Out of ALL the supposed Americans who are disrespectful of a foreign country's society, I suspect it is the Media's crusading journalists who are the ones who stand at the forefront as the nastiest, "ugliest" Americans.

The bottom line here is that America is "Damned if we do and Damned if we don't". It's a no win scenario no matter what way one looks at it. If we left Saddam Hussein alone and he nuked Europe or Israel or dumped some sort of Bio-plague on them we'd still be at fault because A - We sponsored him (because of the oil) or B - We didn't get rid of him in the Gulf War when we could have or C - we didn't invade him (because of the oil) or D - we invaded him and pissed him off (because of the oil), etc. etc. blah blah blah blah blah....

We have to take care of our own now, regardless of whether or not the leftists like it or the Europeans like it or the whomever else likes it or not. That's the way it is. Period, and personally I don't really care what the German Socialists/Communists or the Italian Marxists or the left wingers in Europe think.

The Civil War ended long time ago, no witness lives today

The written records of that period survived.

The kin of those that fought in the war lived and were able to write of their experiences ...

The policies and laws that were passed by those people who managed to live through the civil war CONTINUED to shape and mold our young fledgling nation.

To compeletly discount written accounts and the inherited heritage passed fr0m generation ot generation is, well, disingenuous.

Why on God's green earth is that period, that war, NOT in any manner, way, shape or form in the same vein as those other conflicts?

In closing, it was the survival of our country through this period that eventually made the union stronger - after those experiencess of the civil war - something that *those* who would take is for wimps and sissies and 'the soft west' forget ...

Don't know what you've been reading (or smoking) over there, Mike, but the 2000 election was a dead heat statistically. What's more, all the major (liberal leaning) newspapers did their own recounts in Florida when the election had been solved, and they came up with the same result: Bush won.

As for how we choose our president, it's a lot more democratic than your form, where two minority parties can become a ruling coalition and thwart the majority's choice. That is how you come to the situation where a very small minority can have more than its share of sway over affairs of state, as it has blackmail power over its partner ("give me what I want or I'll leave your coalition and hand government over to the other side").

No reasons are jealousy or envy, at least not in Europe.

Obviously you don't speak for Europe.
The anti-Americanism within Europe is clearly connected to jealousy about America’s position, worry about American culture dominating European culture and also because America is the world's only superpower.

European socialists not only hate capitalism but hate the most successful capitalist nation in history, America and envy the higher standard of living and affluence this has given America.

What really frustrates the current crop of European leaders, isn't Bush himself, "but what he stands for: a powerful United States, to whom they are beholden for their very existence."

"Not only did we save Europe from Adolph Hitler, paying in American lives to liberate much of the Continent, but we spent trillions of dollars protecting Western Europe from a Soviet takeover after the War. But somewhere along the line -- after the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe and the Berlin airlift saved the western half of the city from the same fate as its eastern sector -- European leaders began to resent the United States, big time."
This is clearly envy and jealousy.

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