Posted on 07/20/2003 12:32:57 PM PDT by quidnunc
Anti-American sentiment in Europe, on the other hand, is a long-established set of cultural and political stances that has proven useful in the past mostly as a convenient dissociation from the grittier and less congenial aspects of opposing the Soviet Union.
Having spent the first half of the 1980s in West Germany, I know that rabid anti-Americanism is nothing new in Europe; Americans just weren't aware of it.
;^)
But why does the parasitic left wish to destroy its host, and thus itself? Because it is self-hating?
You mean they are like...Australians?
My favorite is Eurinals.....
Americans weren't aware of the anti-Americanism rampant in a lot of places, Canada for instance.
Most of us going abroad as tourists dealt almost exclusively with people whose best interests depended on not cheesing off the 'Ummies' who spent lots of money in their businesses.
It wasn't until the aftermath of 9/11 that we gradually began to become aware of how foreigners in various nations abroad really feel about the U.S.
But as WaterDragon pointed out, it is a crossfire for the first time in a long time. I think that reflexive anti-American cant has been such an integral feature of the European cultural continuum for so long and so unopposed, that a sudden avalanche of retaliation comes as a shock to those who have become so accustomed to it as to treat it as a natural environment.
I am in complete agreement with Carthago delenda est concerning the makeup and nature of the "new class." The relation of its denizens to their academic roots is crucial to understanding their conviction that they are, in fact, not only smarter than everyone else but smart enough to succeed in dictating not only the rules of discourse but the rules of behavior as well. Their type of fond reliance on reason - their version of reason, at least - tends to have unpleasant consequences the first time it attempts to con a brute with a club that he is not in charge and that they are. The Cambodian tragedy is a case in point. When that happens this class tends to rely on its own brutes with clubs, safe in the delusion that they, too, will go back in their box once the fighting is over. It is the fond fantasy of a history-ignorant fool and a second-rate intellect.
It is partly our own fault for failing to make a measured response to anti-American agitation in Europe prior to this. The difficulty is that it must be allowed if we are to remain true to our own self-professed principles of free speech, but to ignore it and then to open the firehose once the threshold is reached is a sort of passive-aggressive behavior pattern to which America is often prone. That threshold, IMHO, was 9/11, and much of Europe is to be faulted as well for failing to realize just how much 3000 dead in a flaming atrocity really did change the world, at least for their countrymen.
I can't, on the whole, think of the wave of anti-European expression in the U.S. as anything much more than a long-overdue corrective, however. Not all of the people shouting "Death to America" are deluded group-thinkers who are merely going along with the crowd. Some are our real, bitter enemies, and have been operating unanswered for far too long.
Empowerment. Islam and Communism both appeal to weak, discontented, envious people who want to be in a position to screw their enemies.
Prior to Bush being elected thaere wasn't anything serious to get upset with the Eurodorks over.
There was some sneering and sniping about our support of the death penalty, the Second Amendment and such-like, but nothing that was really a burr under the saddle of the average American.
That changed with 9/11 and anti-Americanism in Europe and elsewhere is on full display and Americans are less willing to overlook it than formerly.
In other words a lot of foreigners are now finding that they're walking on the fighting side of Middle America and they're shocked, absolutely shocked!
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