Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Mutual Incomprehension: A clash of civilizations.
National Review Online ^ | March 19, 2003 | John Derbyshire

Posted on 03/19/2003 8:40:36 AM PST by xsysmgr

Interviewing Dick Cheney on Meet the Press this Sunday, Tim Russert kept coming back to the question a lot of us, on both sides of the war issue, are asking: How on earth did the United States come to be so isolated? We have the support of a handful of governments, to be sure, but even they are acting in the teeth of strong opposition from their people. There is broad popular support for a war against Iraq in just two countries: the U.S.A. and Israel. How did things get to such a pass?There are two popular answers: (1) America just doesn't understand how the rest of the world feels. (2) The rest of the world just doesn't understand how America feels. Different people tend to respond with either one or the other of these. Cheney, for example, favored (2).

I'm going to go with both. It takes two to tango, and a gulf of disagreement this wide tells us that there is profound misunderstanding in both directions. There are things about us that the rest of the world doesn't understand, and there are things about them that we don't understand. Please note that mutual incomprehension does not imply moral equivalence. The fact that you and I can't see each other's point of view does not rule out the possibility that one of us is right and the other wrong. The rightness or wrongness depends on external facts, which have been very thoroughly debated on this site and elsewhere. Here I am just going to look at the misunderstandings between America and the rest of the world.

How do we misunderstand each other? Let me number the ways.

They don't understand. — How a-n-g-r-y we are. It was our proud buildings that were brought down on 9/11. It was our office workers, airplane passengers, firemen and cops who got killed. Those attacks were the worst foreign assaults on American soil since the founding of the republic. We are mad as hell, and we have every right to be. It didn't help a bit that we heard stories from all over the world of people rejoicing in our loss and grief, standing up and cheering, dancing in the streets, writing smug editorial pieces in the London Review of Books to the effect that we had it coming. Those things just spread our anger wider, from the monsters who attacked us to the fools who try to give them moral credibility.

We don't understand — How much they resent our wealth and power. Fourteen years after the end of the Cold War, the sheer scale of our supremacy in the world has not really sunk in to our consciousness yet.

Our military is better funded, better equipped, and more awesome by an order of magnitude than any other. Even before 9/11, we accounted for over 36 percent of the world's military expenditure. The next in rank, Russia, had less than six percent.

Our economy makes everyone else's look puny — we currently have 43 percent of the world's economic production. Twenty years ago we fretted about rising competitors like Japan, a united Europe, Asian tigers, China. Now Japan is a busted flush, Europe is choking on red tape, the tigers are trending Japan-wards, and China is facing a major systemic crisis. We stand supreme.

Our culture is omnipresent: peasant lads in Nepal wear NBA T-shirts, teenage girls in Sudan hum the Titanic theme, bankers in Buenos Aires meet at Starbucks.

To the rest of the world, we look like a 200-foot giant. Immense wealth and power may be respected, are occasionally admired, will sometimes be feared, but they are never loved.

"But don't they remember how we saved their bacon twice in the 20th century?" Sure they remember. Gratitude, however, is an emotion with a short half-life. If you save me from drowning, I shall be intensely grateful to you for days and weeks afterwards. Months and even years later, I may still regard you with a warm appreciation. If, however, you are still reminding me of the good deed 50 years on, I shall find it irritating. That is not fair at all, but it's human nature. "I did for you what you could not do for yourself" contains, if you look at it closely, an implied comment about my own abilities.

They don't understand — Our deep idealism. All right, Americans say, we are a giant. Are we not a kindly giant, though? Was there ever a giant with such a will to do good? Can you imagine what a world dominated by Russia would be like? Or China? (If you can't, ask a Hungarian, or a Tibetan.) We are proud of the great good we have done in the world — Lend-Lease, victory over fascism and communism, the Marshall Plan, and all the liberating and wealth-encouraging institutions we have helped fund and support — the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, and, yes, in theory at least, the U.N. Sure, some of those good deeds benefited us, too. That is the "self-interest" in "enlightened self-interest." Will someone please note the other half of the phrase? Uniquely among all the Top Dog nations that the world has ever had, we do not believe that the international order is a zero-sum game, that what is good for us will be bad for you.

Even when we have blundered, it has been with good intentions. France fought in Vietnam to preserve her imperial standing and keep her planters in business; we fought in Vietnam to hold the free world's line against communist dictatorship. Every pronouncement from our leaders about possible war with Iraq comes with a rider that we shall do our utmost to avoid harming civilians. When did any other nation prepare for a military expedition with such oft-repeated declarations? When? The Chinese going into Vietnam in 1979? The Russians going into Chechnya in 1994? The French in Algeria? Iraq attacking Iran? The Libyans in Chad? When? When?

We don't understand — Their cynicism. Two stories.

Around 1991 I was in a movie theater in London's Leicester Square (which is to say, a tony movie theater in the heart of London) watching Tom Selleck in Three Men and a Little Lady. Near the end of the movie, Tom looks into the eyes of his leading lady and says the words she's been longing to hear: "I love you." The London audience erupted in hoots of laughter. Can you believe it? Americans really go for that sappy stuff! What rubes they are!

In China a year and a half ago, I was talking to one of my Chinese relatives about the United States Constitution. He waved away the Constitution with a laugh. "Oh, that's all nonsense. it's just a piece of paper. Doesn't mean anything."

There is an innocence, an earnestness about Americans that, all too often, foreigners just don't get. If we love someone, we look into her eyes and say so. We take our Constitution seriously. One way and another, we passed through most of the great disillusioning experiences of the 20th century, from the Great War to the sexual revolution, with our illusions pretty much intact. Outside the intellectual classes, irony doesn't come easily to Americans. Europeans who come to live in the U.S. find that they have to perform major adjustments to their sense of humor to avoid giving offense to the literal-minded inhabitants of this country.

Americans have had no prolonged education in cynicism. We have never been expected to look up to rulers who claim to be appointed "by the grace of God," yet whose failings are all too obviously human. We have never had to endure the indignity of living in a "people's republic" in which the actual people count for nothing, under a "constitution" whose sole purpose is to provide a fig leaf of legitimacy to naked, brutish power.

They don't understand — Our patriotism. There are styles of patriotism. Old ethno-nations like France, Poland or China tend to assume that patriotism is bred in the bone, and does not need to be shown or expressed except at times of dire national emergency. The flamboyant, everyday patriotism of Americans is unsettling to them, and looks like bumptiousness covering insecurity. There is perhaps no other country in the world in which, on a day that is not a national holiday, you can walk down a residential street and see flags flying from the doorposts. I have been hunting around on the web for statistics on flag ownership — how many citizens, country by country, actually own a copy of their country's flag. Couldn't find those statistics, but I feel sure the U.S.A. easily ranks number one in this table, too; and I bet that was true even before 9/11. I lived more than twenty years in Britain, and I can't recall a single instance of any British person I knew owning a British flag.

We don't understandTheir patriotism. French people, Germans, Russians, even Mexicans, nurse deep attachments to their history, their customs, their language and cuisine, their traditions, the great deeds of their ancestors. We may look down at these people's political incompetence: at France, which has been through five republics, two empires and two kingdoms in the lifetime of our own single Constitution, at the Russians, who submitted to be the slaves of amoral despots for 70 years, at the Germans, who surrendered their liberties to a psychopath with a comic-opera mustache and stood by obediently while he massacred millions of their unarmed fellow-citizens.

Still we should not forget that when you and your ancestors have lived in the same place for a thousand years, speaking the same language and eating the same food, practicing the same religious observances and quoting the same poets, gazing out over the same rivers and hills, you do not take kindly to the intrusions of a 200-year-old upstart nation, half of whose people do not seem even to be able to describe themselves as "American" without sticking something hyphenated in front of the word.

They don't understand — The reverence in which we hold our institutions. We scoff at our politicians, like everyone else in the world, but the institutions they represent are taken very seriously indeed. Shortly after 9/11, on this site, I offered a rude speculation about how Bill Clinton might have reacted to the crisis. I was flooded with indignant e-mail from NRO readers — Clinton-haters all, probably — asking me who the hell I thought I was, insulting the presidency at such a time. Not Clinton — they couldn't have cared less about him — but the presidency. The idea that the institutions of national governance are merely a racket, a cover for the machinations of a ruling class, is very widespread around the world. It occurs to every Chinese person, every Saudi, every Nigerian, every Russian, at least once a day. Even Frenchmen and Italians find themselves thinking it once a week or so. To Americans — except for some small cliques of race agitators and Europeanized intellectuals — it is utterly alien.

We don't understand — How badly George W. Bush travels. Never having been schooled in the fast repartee of a parliamentary debating chamber, Bush seems slow and inarticulate in response. Coming from the openly confessional tradition of Southern Christianity, he seems to foreigners to be religiose rather than religious. Having spent most of his life in a region with a strong sense of identity, he speaks his local dialect unselfconsciously, which makes him sound like a bumpkin to other English-speakers (and even to some Americans). Pronouncing "nuclear" as "noo-koo-luh" tells you nothing more about the man than that he comes from Texas and doesn't care who knows it. It is no more reprehensible than my pronouncing "schedule" with a "sh" instead of a "sk," and it is very unfair of non-Texans to snigger at it. They do, though, and I am not sure they are wrong to do so, bearing in mind what terrible responsibilities lie behind that word "nuclear."

They don't understand — The vitality of our political life. The tremendous events of 1775-1787 fired off a national conversation that is still in full flood today. Does the Second Amendment imply an individualright to own firearms? What exactly does "subject to the jurisdiction of" mean, in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment? How can we square one state's approval of homosexual marriage with the "full faith and credit" of the Constitution's Article IV, Section 1? These things are the stuff of everyday conversation and endless public debate. American political culture has a vigor and breadth unknown elsewhere. The political life of other countries, when you go to them, seems dull and tame.

We don't understand — The narrowness of viewpoint expressed in their media. Centuries of state-sanctioned priesthoods and despotic bureaucracy have left other nations with a deferential attitude to bookish pontificators that America just does not know. As much as we complain of the leftist bias in our media, we can hardly imagine the situation in Britain, where the BBC — far the most important source of news and comment for most people — is staffed entirely by members of the hard-Left lumpen-intelligentsia, people who, to my certain knowledge (I am friends with some of them) were admirers of the Soviet Union down to the hour of its collapse. In France and Germany things are even worse. There is essentially no conservative movement in these countries, nor in any country but the U.S. There are no Second Amendment lobbies, no Club for Growth, no anti-abortion crusaders, no Christian Coalition, no Rush Limbaugh, no Sean Hannity. (I do not say these things don't exist in Britain, France, or Germany. I do say that they have no political influence whatsoever.)

Because of the lack of alternative voices, the effect of political correctness on these countries has been far more dire than in the U.S. In England last November, a journalist was locked up in jail for telling a pro-fox-hunting rally that country people should have the same rights as black people, Muslims, and homosexuals.

Unrestrained by any constitutional protection for free speech, the ruling elites in these countries are wielding p.c. as a club to smash all dissent from approved state doctrines, all resistance to state schemes of social engineering. No voices are heard in Europe now but the voices of the Leftist clerisy who control all the media outlets. These people are all anti-American. (In France and Italy, they are not infrequently actual Communist-party members — yes, Communism is alive and well in Europe.) It is not surprising that the ordinary people of these countries, bathed as they are in this flood of lies from morning till night, are suspicious of us. And this is only to speak of nations that have some decently long tradition of consensual democracy. Russia? China? Turkey? Fugeddaboutit.

I don't know what can be done to bridge this gulf of mutual incomprehension, not at this late stage of the Iraq game. If, as now seems likely (and in brazen defiance of my predictions), the administration is really going to take us to war, our conduct of that war may do something to correct misunderstandings about our goals and motives.

I wouldn't be too optimistic, though. If the war goes well, we shall be more of a giant than ever; if badly, we shall be that most contemptible of creatures, a giant brought low by hubris. And the ideology addled elites who run the media in Europe, and the state functionaries who run them most everywhere else, will, in either case, know what to say to keep the pot of anti-Americanism on the boil.



TOPICS: Extended News; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: europe; war
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-56 last
To: Brian Allen
Thanks for the projection, Ives but, not to worry, I never drink or drug or smoke -- or lend my arse to other blokes.

By this remark, you prove your further detachment from reality.

All of which is why, of course, I cannot, like that poor psychopathologically-projecting-pommy kiwiwannabe hiding out, out there, be a kiwi. Or, come to that, a EURO-peon!

Incoherent and inane.

And on a more serious note, Dear Ivan, if I can be proven wrong on anything and everything I have ever and/or will ever observe that might be considered to be to Britain's detriment, I will be the first to celebrate with you!

I already listed the ways in which you have been proven wrong. It's not my fault you have neither the grace, nor the sense to admit it.

[PS: Sorry to have been off the air these past couple of days, there is a war on out here that has occupied all of my time]

Not that you're fighting in it, or contributing anything useful except insulting "your beloved Fraternal Republic's" allies.

You've gone too far, Brian.

Ivan

41 posted on 03/22/2003 11:28:36 AM PST by MadIvan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: spitz
<< ..... for you to admit you are wrong would take character ..... >>

Thank you, spitz, for the ongoing and fascinating psychopathologically-projected look into the black hole that has supplanted whatever your "character" ever was.

As for me, anyone with half a brain long ago noticed that [1] my life is not conducted as if I am but a contestant in a popularity contest and that [2] I am very much aware that my reputation is but what people like you feel about me.

My Character, on the other hand, is what God and I KNOW about me -- and is in very Good Hands! I am a Good Man being Made Better!

As for admitting I am wrong? I love it! How else shall I continue to learn?

Cordially -- Brian
42 posted on 03/22/2003 11:35:24 AM PST by Brian Allen (This above all -- to thine own self be true)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: Brian Allen
My Character, on the other hand, is what God and I KNOW about me -- and is in very Good Hands! I am a Good Man being Made Better!

Just a heads up, people are noticing your behaviour Brian. Your vitriol against America's closest ally, one that is shedding blood alongside you, is not going unnoticed.

To use an American phrase, "take a chill pill".

Ivan

43 posted on 03/22/2003 11:38:52 AM PST by MadIvan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: MadIvan
Best to push the ignore button when faced with incoherent, Alenskyesque bilge, my British friend. Brian long ago opened his mouth and proved what many suspected ... no need to bother with the dolt.
44 posted on 03/22/2003 11:43:25 AM PST by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote Life Support for others.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr
"we can hardly imagine the situation in Britain, where the BBC — far the most important source of news and comment for most people — is staffed entirely by members of the hard-Left lumpen-intelligentsia"

Not all of 'em.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2868135.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2775105.stm
45 posted on 03/22/2003 12:05:18 PM PST by TheFilter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Comment #46 Removed by Moderator

To: Brian Allen
Brian:

I have every confidence you will be banned. What you launched into is sheer slander.

Ivan

47 posted on 03/22/2003 1:12:32 PM PST by MadIvan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr

I'm not even saying that the author has a point, but in the event that two cultures don't understand each other, the burden is on the militarily *weaker* culture to not provoke the mightier one.

48 posted on 03/22/2003 1:15:34 PM PST by Southack (Media bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr
bump for later
49 posted on 03/22/2003 1:17:38 PM PST by Fzob (Why does this tag line keep showing up?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MadIvan
Hi Ives

Slander? How could that be? Surely no-one identifies with my "inane" and "incoherent" and broad generalizations?

Warm regards -- Brian
50 posted on 03/22/2003 1:19:02 PM PST by Brian Allen (This above all -- to thine own self be true)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

To: Brian Allen
Brian:

You are less subtle, and clever, than you think.

Ivan

51 posted on 03/22/2003 1:20:40 PM PST by MadIvan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 50 | View Replies]

To: MadIvan
<< You are less subtle and clever than you think. >>

Be that as it may, Dear Ives, [And I claim neither cleverness nor subtlety, by the way] I avoid being hypocritical.

I have reckoned for the four and a half years since you joined US, Dear Ivan, that it is a darned shame that you cannot get it that this place is not about me, is not about you -- and is not Brit-centric.

And it is especially a darned shame that you so shamelessly insult and libel those, me included, [As you first did in 1998 within one month your joining FReeRepublic] who ever dare to point out that your ego-driven Brit-centricism is just plain silly. Your posts often seems to be given to intemperateness and to be those of a shameless, insult slinging and often-effectively-libelous, anonymous, bully. Perhaps if you typed less quickly you would have better manners?

Considering the many awful ways in Our Nation's History it has been adversly impacted by our relationship with yours, We Americans love you guys more than enough -- but neither THE world nor, especially, Our American World, centers on Britain.

And that and that alone is what has ever motivated me to jump on some of your more pathetic posturings.

Now you ARE a very much quicker typer than me, are therefore very much more at home in this medium than I am and, judging by the hours you spend online, don't seem to have a Real Job, so you are easily able to outmanouver me in this rather silly medium, especially with those who believe that anything you or I post here will ever have any import beyond that you and your ilk, among whom you have a little populist's following, put on it!

But nothing you will ever sit typing away at will ever change the fact that once-great Britain is just that.

Once great.

But please don't take it personally.

Best ones, Ives -- Brian
52 posted on 03/22/2003 2:25:33 PM PST by Brian Allen (This above all -- to thine own self be true)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 51 | View Replies]

To: Brian Allen
Brian:

I defend my country; I happen to love my country, and you have a very bad habit of slandering it without anything to justify your biases apart from your own vitriol, and God knows where it comes from.

That is my issue with you. That is the only sticking point so far as I am concerned: you obviously define your patriotism in terms of defining other countries downward. I begrudge no American love of their country; what I object to from you is not only do you not begrudge me mine, you launch vicious, unprovoked and unjustified attacks on my country. And when I defend or praise my country, you accuse me of egotism.

And here I stand. When you're outrageous, I will say so. I realise this is an enormous source of frustration for you, but this is how it is.

As for me not having a "real job". Thanks, yes, I am unemployed. I am sure that you spotted that somewhere as I've said it on a couple of occasions. Your attempt to rub salt in the wound is not worthy of a response; it speaks for itself. It speaks of what kind of person you are that you would make such a remark. It speaks even more that you are not ashamed.

Ivan

53 posted on 03/22/2003 2:35:19 PM PST by MadIvan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 52 | View Replies]

To: EternalHope
Stupid article.
Bottom line: when a criminal mugger is beating on me the thing furthest from my mind is "comprehending" him, his motivation, his culture or his cat.
First order of business... kill the S.O.B.
54 posted on 03/22/2003 2:44:34 PM PST by Publius6961 (p>)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr
The narrowness of viewpoint expressed in their media. Centuries of state-sanctioned priesthoods and despotic bureaucracy have left other nations with a deferential attitude to bookish pontificators that America just does not know. As much as we complain of the leftist bias in our media, we can hardly imagine the situation in Britain, where the BBC — far the most important source of news and comment for most people — is staffed entirely by members of the hard-Left lumpen-intelligentsia, people who, to my certain knowledge (I am friends with some of them) were admirers of the Soviet Union down to the hour of its collapse. In France and Germany things are even worse. There is essentially no conservative movement in these countries, nor in any country but the U.S. There are no Second Amendment lobbies, no Club for Growth, no anti-abortion crusaders, no Christian Coalition, no Rush Limbaugh, no Sean Hannity. (I do not say these things don't exist in Britain, France, or Germany. I do say that they have no political influence whatsoever.) Because of the lack of alternative voices, the effect of political correctness on these countries has been far more dire than in the U.S. In England last November, a journalist was locked up in jail for telling a pro-fox-hunting rally that country people should have the same rights as black people, Muslims, and homosexuals. Unrestrained by any constitutional protection for free speech, the ruling elites in these countries are wielding p.c. as a club to smash all dissent from approved state doctrines, all resistance to state schemes of social engineering. No voices are heard in Europe now but the voices of the Leftist clerisy who control all the media outlets. These people are all anti-American. (In France and Italy, they are not infrequently actual Communist-party members — yes, Communism is alive and well in Europe.) It is not surprising that the ordinary people of these countries, bathed as they are in this flood of lies from morning till night, are suspicious of us. And this is only to speak of nations that have some decently long tradition of consensual democracy. Russia? China? Turkey? Fugeddaboutit.

To me this should have been at the top of the list. With the media so controlled by the left, the left is in complete control of the masses. This is going to be an incredibly tough and long fight. We thought we had vanquished communism, but it's alive and well - they've come through the back door!! And they have a strong foothold even here in the US.

WILL WE HAVE THE CONFIDENCE AND STAMINA TO FIGHT BACK??

55 posted on 03/22/2003 2:45:19 PM PST by aquila48
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MadIvan
<< ..... Your attempt to rub salt in the wound is not worthy of a response; it speaks for itself. It speaks of what kind of person you are that you would make such a remark. It speaks even more that you are not ashamed. >>

Dear Ives

Your presumption is showing. I had no idea about that and no intention to "rub salt in" any wound you may have suffered. I am sorry if that is what I unintentionally did.

I apologize!

But I must add that one of the aspects of your and my bouncing off each other, these past years or so, is demonstrated in the gratuitous insults that immediately descend from the false premise that you created from your incorrect assumption.

Your remark about the outrageousness of some of my comments is very true, however -- and I will do you the courtesy during this time of war of curtailing them. Don't worry, I am aware of the presence in the Gulf of Britain's Forces, many of whom I have worked with for years. I have been saddened by the losses they have suffered and I wish them all well.

I also note all of the rest of your remarks and respect them too. As I have mentioned to you many times before I am not at all "anti-British." I have no "vitriol," only an aversion to false claims, pompousity, a condescending attitude to My America -- and gratuitous insult.

At the risk of boring you I will remind you that I have lived in England and loved it very much indeed. As a child I was extremely proud of the fact that the map of the world was colored red pretty much from one end to the other and from top to bottom. True, that was before I began travelling and working around the world [Effectively 650 times around -- and counting] and seeing the effect of the end of Empire on the poor bastards impacted by it -- but I loved it back when. And my son lives in England and is in London right at this minute.

And when I next come to visit him I would love to meet you and visit for a bit and bury the hatchet. I will take the chance that you will punch me in the nose as I belive you may have threatened a time or two -- and will bet you we part mates.

Meantime, for statrters, thank you for your passion -- and your Nation for its support.

Best ones -- Brian

56 posted on 03/22/2003 3:18:58 PM PST by Brian Allen (This above all -- to thine own self be true)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-56 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson