Hating America: A History

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 1/20/05 | Richard B. Speed

[gr8eman]

Actually...the Eastern Europeans like the Americans although they feel sold out by FDR for letting Uncle Joe take over. I had a Polish girl ask me why we sold them out and I told her the story of the Yalta "conference" wen the KGB bugged FDR's room!
Never been to Iceland although my Dad told me they liked Americans as long as they are white...Norwegians are hardcore socialists and most are appalled that the US has no socialized health care even though a janitor there makes $110k a year and takes home $19k of it and are happy to eat nasty reindeer steaks. Good fishing though.
The Russian men mostly just care about drinking and the women outside Moscow make very good wives but the Muscovite women are "spoiled", as I have repeatedly been told. They like Americans in general and have a good sense of humor especially when talking about the cold war!
The Maltese people have a strange language, it is cross between Italian and Arabic it seems and they love the British for saving them in WWII! They liked me just fine, and I am American!
In general most people everywhere like Americans as long as they're spending money in their country, but if you want any more advice...just drop me a note!

[SolutionsOnly]

It's all a matter of what one chooses to focus on. Freedom is a double edged sword. It allows the best to rise to the top and the worst to sink to the bottom. I'm very proud of the United States when I look to the founding fathers and completely ashamed of it when I flip the television to MTV. If the American media is the world's window into America, I can completely understand a revulsion to our culture. I'm not saying it's fair or accurate - just understandable. The media (TV, movies, etc) present the worst we have to offer.

It takes intellectual maturity to accept the inherent strengths and weaknesses in human character. Freedom unleashes both good and evil - Character counts - and our collective character has been slipping since the 60's (I'll use the quality of television programming as exhibit A). It takes all the pieces of the puzzle to come to accurate conclusion regarding the goodness or evil of the US and most of the world does not get the full picture.

[Freedom4US]

"Even in the twenty-first century, Americans prefer a plain talking Texas cowboy who expresses himself in sentence fragments to a Harvard educated liberal who speaks in nuanced paragraphs."

It's not quite so simple. William F. Buckley speaks in "nuanced paragraphs"; but he's a conservative. That our learned institutions are capable of producing dunderheads of the highest order isn't my concern. The author might note that the "Texas cowboy" is a graduate of Yale, but that wouldn't fit in with his thesis. I'm of the mind "Don't let schooling get in the way of your education..." - and there's nothing wrong with Cowboys for that matter.

[IronJack]

I suspect Old Europe, ensconced in the worn but comfortable trappings of privilege, saw the American continent first as a rough-and-tumble haven for misfits, then as a mother lode run by simpletons ripe for the exploiting, and finally as a cultural and economic threat.

Europe is not exempt from any of the charges leveled against the US: imperialism, slavery, war-mongering, decadence, xenophobia, greed, exploitation ... Every country in Europe has been guilty of the same offenses.

Of course, those charges are overblown from the start. But Europe is the classic glass house, and America's critics are the first to stand on the porch with a handful of stones.

[gr8eman]

I live in Germany and there is as much self-loathing for other Germans as dislike of Americans, if not more. The people who live in the hills dislike the people who live in the valley and so on. It is not much different in France or elsewhere. My favorite French restaurant (over the border) is like a country kichen and the people there are great. They don't like people from Paris or certain Germans and I must say are some of the finest people you will meet anywhere.

The whole hate America crap is "one side of the sword" as you say. Age old grudges will outlast any hate American feelings (see War of 1812) which is probably why the Americans are so successful in the world. We fight out our personal differences on street corners and then team up to kick A$$ against anyone who tries to stare us down.

[IronJack]

Europe's best, bravest and brightest came to America to find a new life.

Not really. Many of the immigrants to the New World left one step ahead of the bondsman.

[RasterMaster]

"I think you should hand the statue of liberty back!"

And you could always learn to speak German.

[gr8eman]

Point well taken. Like I said in another post, the whole "Hate America" thing is just one side of a double-edged sword. I have been in Europe for 6 years and I know that having that blue passport gives me carte blanche...especially when being pulled over for speeding in Bulgaria. They just waved me on! Great feeling!

[Little Ray]

Slower to abolish slavery? At least we didn't try backslide into it like the Euroweenie communists who wanted to enslave all mankind.

Why should we have a woman president? Equality of opportunity doesn't gurantee equality of outcome. Personally, I have some serious issue with giving women the vote anyway...

I will agree that the US has issues (for one, we need less socialism and more economic freedom), but I have done a bit of traveling and I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather live.

[Taliesan]

But does not most Americans think the same, that they are the superior moral nation on earth?

I think there is a difference between the morality of a culture and the morality of a political system. I can't imagine anyone seriously arguing that our culture is morally superior; indeed, the opposite. We have the freedom to be degenerate and, by God, we have exercised it.

But there you have it. The singular American assertion is that THE PROPER DOMINANT POLITICAL VALUE is not "morality", but liberty, and that political systems which have sought morality have historically produced oppression, and that these shores are a refuge from said oppression. The cost of freedom is the possibility of decadence.

The American assertion is that the morality of a political system is judged by the degree of individual freedom it affords. By this standard we assert our political system -- not our culture -- is superior, and the truth of this assertion has been exonerated by the tens of millions of immigrant feet, the "...poor and huddled masses, yearning to be free..." for 250 years.

[kipita]

You still do not have a women President like some European countries have had. You were slower to abolish slavery than lots of European countries. You were slower to give women the vote than many European countries and I know of no European countries were blacks were officially treated as second class citizens and had to go to colors-only places and sit on different parts of a bus.

You are also wrong to say that it is the only country in the world were anyone can achieve success. I think you will find in every Western European country this is also possible. In fact any serious analyst wouldn't reply to that statement but merely choke with laughter.

Right, my wife is from Europe and decided that she wanted to raise our daughter in Europe based on the ramifications of your first paragraph. While things are getting better of late Europe is still better.

However, in a relative sense (America) Europe still exists as a society of elitist and the lower echelons of society sort of know their place. This explains Europe biggest problem, the unions, and the sort of class warfare that's taking place. Moreover, if a Bill Gates, John Chambers, Carl Rove, or Michael Dell were born in Europe they would immigrate to America to "make it".

So I respectively partly agree and partly disagree.

[SolutionsOnly]

What does being "AMERICAN" mean as opposed to being "BRITISH"?

I suspect what you're seeing here is tribalism at it's worst. To me, being American is subscribing to the principles set forth by our founding fathers. And since the revolution, England has come to adopt a more American approach (by relegating the monarchy to the background). We are more similar than different. In the values sense there are many Brits that are better 'Americans' than folks born in the US. Who would make a better 'American'? Margaret Thatcher or Michael Moore?

Being 'AMERICAN' is meaningless in and of itself. Noam Chomsky, Frank Rich, Kim Gandy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and Danny Glover are (or were) technically Americans. But does that mean I'd stand beside them before an honorable Brit, German, Aussie, or Frenchman? Absolutely not! (...et Je deteste le francaise!)