The Unloved American

The New Yorker ^ | March 3, 2003 | SIMON SCHAMA

[Grit]

THE UNLOVED AMERICAN

by SIMON SCHAMA
Two centuries of alienating Europe.
Issue of 2003-03-10
Posted 2003-03-03

On the Fourth of July in 1889, Rudyard Kipling found himself near Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone with a party of tourists from New England.

He winced as a "clergyman rose up and told them they were the greatest, freest, sublimest, most chivalrous, and richest people on the face of the earth, and they all said Amen."

Kipling--who had travelled from India to California, and then across the North American continent--was bewildered by the patriotic hyperbole that seemed to come so naturally to the citizens of the United States...

[Grit]

An interesting read on the history of Anti-American sentiment.

[Maelstrom]

bump

[Stentor]

Two centuries of alienating Europe.

Fortunate is the existence of the Atlantic ocean. While we were alienating Europe, they were killing each other in great numbers.

[Davis]

Check out American anti-Americans, HERE

[Publius]

Citizens, Schama's book on the French Revolution, is still one of the greatest history books of the past generation.

This article is pretty good, but I'm surprised that Schama mentions Charles Dickens without mentioning Martin Chuzzlewit, which contains some hilarious -- and devastating -- views of Jacksonian America along the Ohio River.

[Utah Girl]

Bump

[Shermy]

It's odd. A narrative of the prejudices of mostly snobbish European literary figures complaining about perceived American faults which their homelands practice or suffer worse. Kipling complaining about American patriotism? Gag me!

The author has an inferiority complex about being American (if he is). A standard line with these folk is that anything European is better, smarter, lacking in self-interests, etc.

[SquirrelKing]

More proof that there's nothing new under the sun. Remember, we didn't go over in WWI or WWI because we loved "good 'ol Europe", we went to kick some a$$ because somebody had to do it.

[Chi-townChief]

Don't you just love those wacky half-baked EuroPeons?

[Utah Girl]

I found the sentence in the article where some snooty Europeans sniffed that Americans got rich because of slavery rather appalling and hypocritical. The US got rid of slavery quite a few years before the British did, and many European countries may not have had slaves, but they sure did in their colonies for decades after the Civil War.

[Numbers Guy]

You know what speaks volumes much more than the linked article with its history of European literary and intellectual figures visiting this country and mocking her?

The tens of millions of *other* Europeans who weren't writers or intellectuals, but rather ordinary people who chose to move here because they saw freedom and opportunity.

I haven't seen too many of those people seeking to move back to Europe, and that tells you all you need to know.

[Mears]

THe thing I've been trying to figure out for all of my 70 years on this earth is why,if you hate America so much,don't you leave?


It's a puzzlement!

[Shermy]

Some southerners might have got rich off slavery but the gains were lost in the destruction of the civil war and costs thereafter. Brits didn't help much supporting the South. And they seem to forget the little problem about their own colonies.

The wealth of this country came in much part from its expanse and resources.

[UncleSamUSA]

I am deeply disappointed in Simon Schama. Schama is a noted British historian who has just completed a three volume "History of Britain" which was also made into a TV series that is shown in rerun occasionally here on The History Channel.

It is an idiosyncratic and often boring but still earnest history of the British Isles from pre-Roman days to the present. I was unaware that even someone like Schama had been infected with this degree of chic, intellectual America bashing. It is disheartening to see what passes for intelligent, analytical minds so taken over with a reflexive hatred for what this country is and what it stands for.

Then again, he may be one of those still-embittered Brits who bemoans our victory over the Redcoats at Yorktown and at the beginnings of the crumbling of their beloved "Empire".

Still and all, Schama is now on my "ignore list" of historians who have now come out of the closet as America Haters.

[Grit]

More proof that there's nothing new under the sun.

My thoughts exactly. I had no idea the stereotype of the "ugly-american" had such a history.

[Grit]

The tens of millions of *other* Europeans who weren't writers or intellectuals, but rather ordinary people who chose to move here because they saw freedom and opportunity.

Oh, well, the riff-raff don't count. They're just uneducated yokels lured in by that phoney American dream.

[Utah Girl]

I agree with you, sorry I didn't mean to give the impression that I agreed with the statement in the article. I just thought it was extraordinarily hypocritical of those Europeans. Plus it is obvious they hadn't/haven't studied history.

[dirtboy]

They're just uneducated yokels lured in by that phoney American dream.

Leaving the European elites to invent marxism and fascism, and subsequently to descend into a socialist muddle where in many cases its against the law to defend yourself from a criminal. P.J. O'Rourke was right - anyone with an IQ greater than their hat size left Europe long ago...

[Frankss]

Oh Lord it's hard to be humble!

[Shermy]

I didn't read your statement that way at all. :)