"Judgment Day in Mystery Babylon?"

"America-bashing has sadly come to be "the opium of the intellectual," to use the phrase Raymond Aron borrowed from Marx in order to characterize those who followed the latter into the twentieth century. And like opium it produces vivid and fantastic dreams. This is an intellectual tragedy." (Lee Harris)

News and commentary on anti-Americanism and anti-West sentiments.

Part 1: 2001/09/12 - 2001/09/29
Part 2: 2001/10/01 - 2001/12/28
Part 3: 2002/01/08 - 2002/06/28
Part 4: 2002/07/01 - 2002/08/30
Part 5: 2002/09/03 - 2002/09/30
Part 6: 2002/10/03 - 2002/11/30
Part 7: 2002/12/01 - 2003/01/15
Part 8: 2003/01/17 -

January 2003
"Down with the Peace Movement" (Adam G. Mersereau, National Review, 2003/01/15)
"The United States of America has gone mad" (John le Carré, The Times, 2003/01/15)
"Europe vs. America" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2003/01/14)
"'Bomb Texas' - The psychological roots of anti-Americanism" (Victor Davis Hanson, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/01/13)
"Blut für öl" (Der Spiegel, 2003/01/13)
"Germany's Implosion" (Andrew Sullivan, andrewsullivan.com, 2003/01/13)
"It's interesting how the American internment..." (Robert Goodfellow, aeglos.blogspot.com, 2003/01/12)
"Thousands join LA anti-war rally" (BBC News, 2003/01/12)
"The hatred of America is the socialism of fools" (Michael Gove, The Times, 2003/01/08)
"Slouching from Bethlehem" (Andrew Sullivan, Salon.com, 2003/01/07)
"The latest example..." (Tim Blair, timblair.blogspot.com, 2003/01/08)
"Stupidity Watch" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/01/03)
"It's Not the Money, Stupid!" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/01/03)
"A New Marcos" (Andrew Sullivan, andrewsullivan.com, 2003/01/03)

December 2002
"Leftist Lies About the War" (Preston McConkie, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/12/27)
"STOP HIM" (The Daily Mirror, 2002/12/20)
"Lessons in hate, on a campus near you" (Leonard Stern, Ottawa Citizen/Campus Watch, 2002/12/14)
"N. Korea: 'Burning hatred' for U.S" (CNN.com, 2002/12/14)
"Norman Mailer's Buchananite Theory" (Chris Weinkopf, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/12/11)
"The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal" (Harold Pinter, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/12/11)
"It's not our fault we're morally superior to U.S." (Richard Gwyn, The Star, 2002/12/08)
"Love you, love you not. A world trying to hate the US" (Ben Macintyre, The Times, 2002/12/07)
"World Image of U.S. Declines" (Richard Morin, The Washington Post, 2002/12/05)
"The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing" (Lee Harris, Policy Review, from the December 2002 and January 2003 issue)
"Blaming the victim of terrorism" (Cathy Young, The Boston Globe, 2002/12/02)
"They'll have to think again about the Quiet American" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/12/01)

 

"Down with the Peace Movement" (Adam G. Mersereau, National Review, 2003/01/15)
"In the mind of the peace activist, America is not just the sole superpower, it is the center of gravity for all world events; and so every world event is simply an equal (and sometimes opposite) reaction to a prior American action. Peace activists believe that America's economy and culture are such dominant forces in the lives of people throughout the world that the actions and policies of other nations can be interpreted only as mere reactions to the actions and policies of the United States government. Therefore, they believe America has the unbounded ability to manipulate foreign governments through economic and cultural means. Peacenik foreign policy is really very simple: Without an action by the United States, there will be no reaction by others. If America does not start a war, there will be no war. ...
The peace activist then reaches the conclusion that the United States can make a unilateral decision for peace, simply by choosing to lay down its arms. If the United States would ignore open and notorious breaches of U.N. directives and treaties, and simply refuse to disturb the current state of peace, then peace would prevail by default."

"The United States of America has gone mad" (John le Carré, The Times, 2003/01/15)
The Lunatic Who Came in from the Cold. John le Carré tries to outdo Gore Vidal, Harold Pinter and Norman Mailer in apocalyptic anti-Americanism. That might seem an impossible task, considering the fierce competition, but he certainly is a main contender: "America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. ... But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election. ...
What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won't. If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt."

"Europe vs. America" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2003/01/14)
"In Florence, Italy, writes Benny Irdi Nirenstein in National Review, "300,000 Europeans - many waving Palestinian flags and sporting T-shirt images of Che Guevara, Stalin and Mao Zedong - marched to denounce the possibility that the United States will liberate the Iraqi people." Palestinian flags and images of Stalin? What gives? One explanation for this hostility comes in an insightful article last week by the American analyst Ken Sanes in Hong Kong's "Asia Times Online." ... Sanes' originality lies in taking the Euro-American differences and presenting them not as two variants of one system, but as two distinct systems - not two dialects of one language, but two discrete languages. If this interpretation is correct, recent Euro-American tensions over such issues as irradiated food, the death penalty, the International Criminal Court, Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict are signs of a significant division, not just transient squabbles. The face-off between the Bush administration and, say, Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is deeper and darker than usually perceived." (See also: "Clash of the super-systems" (Ken Sanes, Asia Times, 2003/01/07))

"'Bomb Texas' - The psychological roots of anti-Americanism" (Victor Davis Hanson, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/01/13)
A must-read essay, in which Hanson concentrates on the apparent paradox of elite Americans denouncing the flesh-pots they are gorging on: "Traveling abroad, the actress Jessica Lange pertly announced: "It makes me feel ashamed to come from the United States - it is humiliating." ...
Among some of our new aristocrats, the realization has dawned that their own good fortune is not shared world-wide, and must therefore exist at the expense of others, if not of the planet itself. This hurts terribly, at least in theory. ...
Try asking someone awash in a sea of materialism to match word with deed and actually disconnect from the opulence that is purportedly killing the world and its inhabitants. Celebrity critics of corporate capitalism neither redistribute their wealth nor separate themselves from their multinational recording companies, film studios, and publication houses - or even insist on lower fees so that the oppressed might enjoy cheaper tickets at the multiplex. Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin so hate George W. Bush that they threaten to leave our shores - promises, promises."

"Blut für öl"
(Der Spiegel, 2003/01/13)

"Germany's Implosion" (Andrew Sullivan, andrewsullivan.com, 2003/01/13)
"Meanwhile, German popular culture seems to be becoming more and more pathologically anti-American. Take a look at this week's cover of Der Spiegel. They even turn Old Glory into a version of the Hammer and Sickle. Truly repulsive." (See also the cover: "Blut für öl" (Der Spiegel, 2003/01/13))

"It's interesting how the American internment..." (Robert Goodfellow, aeglos.blogspot.com, 2003/01/12)
A brilliant post, found via InstaPundit: "It's interesting how the American internment of Japanese for 4 years during WWII is constantly used as an example of America's unique evil and racism. When revisiting the subject rarely, if ever, is the Canadian example brought up. At least in America the internee families were kept together, in Canada (which also rounded up Japanese Canadian citizens) the men and women were separated from each other and the men were sent into forced labor. And we all know, I hope, how Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria scored on the racial sensitivity scale during WWII. I find the ability of Europe especially to "misremember" facts so as to paint themselves as lilly-white angels and the US as brutish and uncivilized thugs to be quite remarkable."

"Thousands join LA anti-war rally" (BBC News, 2003/01/12)
"A lot of people have been silenced for a long time," says Martin Sheen. Yeah, right. How many? For how long? These allegations are pathetic, especially as they are often made by high profile dissenters in high profile media. For a recent example, see Joan Didion below: "Thousands of people have taken part in a rally in the American city of Los Angeles to protest against a possible war with Iraq. Film star Martin Sheen - who plays a fictional US president in the television series The West Wing - called for Americans to seek a peaceful approach to the crisis over Iraq. ... Protesters chanted "no blood for oil" and "stop Bush now" as they rallied around government buildings. "A lot of people have been silenced for a long time, but that is ending," Sheen told the crowd. 'We are telling the world that we are patriotic Americans but we do not support war with Iraq.'" (See also: "Thousands in LA Protest Possible War" (AP/The Guardian, 2003/01/12): "Many of the signs at the protest appeared to be directed at the president. "Mr. Bush, don't repeat your daddy's mistakes,'' read one. "Bush is the real terrorist,'' said another.")

"The hatred of America is the socialism of fools" (Michael Gove, The Times, 2003/01/08)
"Why then do the myths of America the Hateful take such powerful hold? Because anti-Americanism provides a useful emotional function which goes beyond logic and reaches deep into the darker recesses of the European soul. In centuries past those on the Left who wished to personalise their hatred of capitalism, who sought to make it emotionally resonant by fastening an envious political passion on to a blameless scapegoat people, embraced anti-Semitism. It was the socialism of fools. Which is what anti-Americanism is now. It should not therefore be surprising that those on the populist Right who share the Left's antipathy towards the US are those, like the Austrian Freedom Party or the French National Front, who are heirs of anti-Semitic traditions. Nor should it be remarkable that the other tie which binds these allies of new Left and old Right together, the thread linking those such as George Galloway and Jörg Haider, is their hostility to Israel. Both America and Israel were founded by peoples who were refugees from prejudice in Europe. Europe's tragedy is that prejudice has been given new life, in antipathy to both those states."

"Slouching from Bethlehem" (Andrew Sullivan, Salon.com, 2003/01/07)
Sullivan fiskes an essay by Joan Didion: "There is no argument in it, no prescription for American foreign policy now, no alternative proposed for countering the murderous terrorism that has already killed thousands of Americans. In this, Didion perfectly represents a certain type of decay in thinking on the intellectual left. Their argument about where we should go from here is essentially, "We shouldn't be here in the first place." ...
But more revealing of the mind-set of today's left is Didion's belief that somehow open discussion has been curtailed, censored or chilled after 9/11 by a cadre of right-wing bullies. This is simply hooey. The First Amendment still exists. Those legions of leftists who occupy such establishment heights at most American university faculties and the nation's newsrooms and editorial boards, not to speak of the hyperliberal foundations, can still say whatever they think. But these days, they've actually got to endure criticism, opposition and occasionally ridicule as a consequence. They don't like this. They're used to writing their opinions to universal applause, prizes, sinecures and pliant reviews. Sorry to spoil the party, Joan. But debate in wartime is often a tough and grueling experience. Stop whining and start arguing." (See also: "Fixed Opinions, or The Hinge of History" (Joan Didion. The New York Review of Books, from the 2003/01/16 issue))

"The latest example..." (Tim Blair, timblair.blogspot.com, 2003/01/08)
"The latest example of extreme moral equivalence from the extremist Left: "It's all very well to be oh-so-wise after the September 11 terrorist attacks, but making generalisations about Saudi Arabia having "no freedom of the press, bill of rights or democratically elected parliament" is a bit rich when you take into account the rights of Americans like Taliban fighter John Walker and censored TV show host Bill Maher, and the absolute debacle that the Florida vote was." Those Indymedia lunatics just can't help themselves, can they? John Walker Lindh took up arms against his country and was tried and jailed for it; this reveals, in the writer's mind, a nation with a similar regard for the rights of its citizenry as exhibited by Saudi Arabia. Poor Bill Maher's show got canned; this means the US has no free press. And the 2000 election was a "debacle" that apparently delivered a government with the democratic authority of the House of Saud. Who's making the generalisations here, idiot? Actually, the quote above isn't from any teenage Indymedia acne warror. It's from Sydney Morning Herald television writer Henry Everingham's preview (no link available) of the documentary Errors In Judgement, which aired last night on SBS."

"Stupidity Watch" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/01/03)
"Writing in the Roanoke (Va.) Times, one Glen Martin, a professor at Radford University, finds ominous parallels: 'In Nazi Germany at this time of year, people freely shopped in large department stores for gifts for family and friends. The streets were full of traffic. It was "business as usual" for most of the citizens. While in the colonial states conquered by the Nazis, and in the concentrations camps for Jews, gays and communists, life was a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations. In the United States today, people freely shop in large department stores for gifts, and the streets are full of traffic. While in our most recent victim states of Afghanistan, Iraq under murderous sanctions, Argentina after engineering its economic collapse, and Colombia under U.S. military aid for repression, life is a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations.'" (See also: "Totalitarianism nears - Without protest, Americans are giving up freedom" (Glen T. Martin, roanoke.com, 2003/01/02))

"It's Not the Money, Stupid!" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/01/03)
Hanson on the Patty Murrays of the West: "Sadly, prosperous Westerners never seem to learn of the folly of honoring appeasement and naiveté - the awarding of Nobel Peace Prizes to the likes of a Le Duc Tho and Yasser Arafat, as if global praise might make them statesmen rather than murderers, to a Kim Dae Jung as if his demonstrable kindness would pacify rather than embolden North Korea, or to ex-President Carter as if his well-meaning parleys with tyrants could bring peace. As chief executive emeritus, his saintliness now plays well; but we forget in the rough and tumble of his presidency that Mr. Carter's brag that he had no "inordinate fear of Communism" was followed by the brutal Russian invasion of Afghanistan, that sending Ramsay Clark to apologize to the Iranians did not win the release of the American hostages in 1980, and that U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young's praise of Cuban troops in Africa and his clenched-fist, black-power salutes to African leaders did not stop Communist intervention and bloodletting abroad.
The United States cannot lose the struggle on the battlefield, as we did not lose the Vietnam conflict in the strict military sense either. But we most surely can fail in this war if our citizens and leaders reach for their checkbooks as the fundamentalists reach for their guns - or convince themselves that our enemies fight because of something we, rather than they, did." (See also: "The Osama bin Laden Day-Care Center" (James Taranto, "The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/12/20))

"A New Marcos" (Andrew Sullivan, andrewsullivan.com, 2003/01/03)
"Paul Krugman just gave an interview to Der Spiegel. It's a festival of German-pleasing anti-Americanism and Bush-bashing. Here are a couple of choice quotes, worthy of Michael Moore: "No one expects the President to be a saint. ... But it is pretty amazing the distance that this administration will go in trying to fool the public. Sometimes I have the feeling that I no longer live in one of the world's oldest democracies, but in the Philippines under a new Marcos." Useful to know that a columnist at the New York Times believes that president Bush is indistinguishable from an unelected tyrant. Then there's this piece of naked pandering to European prejudice against America: "Instead [of writing a column about the New Economy], I now find myself once again as the lonely voice of truth in a sea of corruption. Sometimes I think that one of these days I'll end up in one of those cages on Guantanamo Bay (laughs). But I can still seek asylum in Germany. I hope you'd accept me in an emergency. The poor beleaguered martyr for truth." So persecuted by the government he gets to write twice weekly for the New York Times and have the media establishment gush constantly about him. So pure you'd never know he once served on Enron's Advisory Board and still hasn't returned his $50,000 sinecure. Asylum? Lonely voice of truth? The vanity is almost as gob-smacking as the self-righteousness." (See also: "'Koalition der Eliten'" (Der Spiegel, from the 1/2003 issue))

"Leftist Lies About the War" (Preston McConkie, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/12/27)
"Almost invariably, when protesters cry "peace" they mainly mean peace for their own minds – absolution from sacrifice or the need to make difficult choices. To that end, they are willing to wage total war against the truth. From accusations that America is starving Iraqi children, to accusations that Bush plan a silent genocide, to accusations that multibillion-dollar wars are fought over $1 billion construction projects, their version of reality requires reassigning motives and responsibility, downplaying or exaggerating facts, and fabricating fantastic lies. ...
The current war is generally a popular one with Americans galvanized by 9/11, so its opponents attack from three directions. The first employs exaggerations or fabrications about America's role in world tragedies, ranging from ad nauseam recitations of single incidents (Japanese internments, Mai Lai) to creative math depicting Americans as mass murderers surpassing Stalin. The second requires minimizing, dismissing or shifting blame for real atrocities committed by enemy regimes. The third requires twisting the motives for a war so the cause eclipses the outcome. The goal is a policy of abandonment. Renouncing U.S. interests is an article of faith among war protesters, and if that means abandoning the victims of tyranny as well, then it's a question of tough priorities – and accepting whatever collateral damage it takes to give them a warm feeling of moral superiority inside."

"STOP HIM" (The Daily Mirror, 2002/12/20)

"Lessons in hate, on a campus near you" (Leonard Stern, Ottawa Citizen/Campus Watch, 2002/12/14)
A report from a Middle East Studies Association (MESA) conference: "The highlight of the three-day conference in Washington was a barnburner of a speech by Stanford University's Joel Beinin, the outgoing president of MESA. Invoking the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Beinin mocked Americans for thinking they should be "uniquely protected from the consequences of (their) actions." He heaped contempt on foreign-policy analysts - "terror-ologists," he called them - who go on television to discuss Islamic extremism. He denounced the president of Harvard University for suggesting some weeks ago that anti-Israel activism on campus is mutating into anti-Semitism. Finally, Mr. Beinin accused "neoconservative true believers with ties to the Israeli right" of orchestrating a smear campaign against him and other Middle East experts. MESA members gave him a standing ovation. ... Do the professors believe their own propaganda? There was a telling incident on the first day of the conference. ... Suddenly, at the far end of the hall, there was a loud boom, like an explosion. Had the convention been a gathering of mathematicians or sociology professors, they presumably would have walked over to see what the noise was. MESA members instead stampeded for the exit, elbowing their way up the escalators to safety. Turned out it wasn't a bomb but only a blown air conditioner, and there were lots of embarrassed smiles as everyone filed back in. But for a group that insists the terrorist threat is a fiction, manufactured to justify persecution of minorities, they sure seemed awfully jumpy."

"N. Korea: 'Burning hatred' for U.S" (CNN.com, 2002/12/14)
"Amid a row over its nuclear weapons program, North Korea has fired a barb at Washington, saying it is ready to deliver "bitter defeat and death" to a threatening United States. ... "The DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] remains unfazed as it has made full preparations to cope with the confrontation and clash with the Yankees," a commentary in the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said. "The army and people of the DPRK with burning hatred for the Yankees are in full readiness to fight a death-defying battle," the commentary said, carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency."

"Norman Mailer's Buchananite Theory" (Chris Weinkopf, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/12/11)
"But the most novel explanation to date comes from self-professed "left-conservative" Norman Mailer, the 79-year old, Pulitzer Prize-winning author who offers his explanation in the latest issue of Pat Buchanan's fortnightly misnomer, The American Conservative. According to Mailer, the war is all about - what else? - sex. ... "Behind the whole thing in Iraq is the desire to have a huge military presence in the near-East as a stepping stone for eventually taking over the world," Mailer says. The puritans in the White House believe that "if America becomes again a military machine that is huge in order to oversee all its new commitments, then American sexual freedom, willy-nilly, will have to go on the back burner. Commitment and dedication will become necessary national values (with all the hypocrisy attendant on that)." So a new Roman Empire (one, presumably, not given toward the sexual predilections and excesses of the first one), is the only way to make Britney Spears cover up her midriff. Who knew? ... Bush is such a dimwit, he doesn't even know he's plotting to take over the world, let alone why. In fact, Mailer explains, it's possible that no one knows - no one, that is, except for Mailer. "I don't know if the White House principals talk to one another in private about this," he says, adding that 'they may not even be wholly aware of it themselves, not all of them.'" (Note: Mailer's article is not available online. See also: "Norman Mailer declares: 'America is so vain'" (Matt Drudge, Drudge Report, 2002/09/06))

"The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal" (Harold Pinter, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/12/11)
A perfect example of the logic of anti-Americanism. All the world's problems are blamed on the U.S. - nevermind the primary aggressors. According to this worldview, the responsibility for a poison gas attack against London's Underground "will rest entirely on the shoulders of our Prime Minister", because of his "contemptible and shameful subservience to America": "However, I found that to emerge from a personal nightmare was to enter an infinitely more pervasive public nightmare - the nightmare of American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence; the most powerful nation the world has ever known effectively waging war against the rest of the world. ... The atrocity in New York was predictable and inevitable. It was an act of retaliation against constant and systematic manifestations of state terrorism on the part of America over many years, in all parts of the world. ... Apparently a terrorist poison gas attack on the London Underground system was recently prevented. But such an act may indeed take place. Thousands of schoolchildren travel on the Underground every day. If there is a poison gas attack from which they die, the responsibility will rest entirely on the shoulders of our Prime Minister." (See also: "Degree Speech to the University of Florence 10th September 2001" (Harold Pinter, haroldpinter.org, 2001/10/10))

"It's not our fault we're morally superior to U.S." (Richard Gwyn, The Star, 2002/12/08)
At first I thought this column on the "morally superior" Canadians was a parody. For instance, anti-American Canadians are hardly unique when they "dare to feel morally superior" to Americans That's rather a pretty good definition of anti-Americanism generally. Also, Gwyn's allegation that Americans "are absolutely certain they are superior to everyone else" is a telling example of the "racialism" prevalent in recent anti-Americanism, lambasting Americans rather than American policies:
"First, for Canadians to feel this way, even if wholly unjustified, is a sign of national self-confidence. It makes us unique in the world Lots of others resent Americans, envy them, wish they'd get out of their faces. Some people hate Americans. Many others love them. Lots of people both love them and hate them. Only Canadians, though, dare to feel morally superior to them. ... It's quite challenging to understand why we should be so bold. My own guess is it's because we feel we are better North Americans than they are; that is, we jointly possess most of the essential attributes of being a North American - optimism, love of freedom, a sense of limitless possibilities - but, in addition, have done a better job of being a collective, of having a sense of solidarity. ... If all of this is good for us - certainly a lot better than our traditional, self-deprecatory foot-shuffling - it's also good for Americans. They are absolutely certain they are superior to everyone else. Americans absorb with their mothers' milk a conviction that they are an exceptional nation, a city on the hill, a light unto others. ... Back to the main point. Quite a few Canadians do feel morally superior to Americans. If that nettles some Americans, good - it might help them to understand how the rest of the world feels about Americans' overwhelming presumption of superiority to everyone and everything."

"Love you, love you not. A world trying to hate the US" (Ben Macintyre, The Times, 2002/12/07)
"There is a residual Neo-Marxist train of thought which holds that anti-Americanism in general, and the attack on the World Trade Centre in particular, herald the beginning of the end of global capitalism, part of an ineluctable process in which the oppressed countries will rise and overthrow the capitalist behemoth. ... So are September 11 and the new anti-Americanism evidence of a global revolt against American capitalism? Hardly. The World Trade Centre attacks did not undermine American capitalism but rather increased political unity within it, provoking a more bullish internationalism. The notion that al-Qaeda's insane perversion of Islam represents revolution of a kind Marx would have recognised is mere fantasy. Increased America-bashing is not evidence of some economically driven uprising by the poorest countries against the richest one, but a sign that the US is not handling its hegemonic status well. ... America's growing unpopularity will be stopped and reversed when a greater effort is made to persuade the world's myriad Coca-Cola drinkers that the Pax Americana, for all its flaws, is still the best pax around." (See also: "World Image of U.S. Declines" (Richard Morin, The Washington Post, 2002/12/05) and "The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing" (Lee Harris, Policy Review, from the December 2002 and January 2003 issue))

"World Image of U.S. Declines" (Richard Morin, The Washington Post, 2002/12/05)
"Suspicion about U.S. motives in Iraq coupled with the widely held beliefs that the United States routinely ignores the interests of other nations and doesn't do enough to help solve global problems have battered the nation's image around the world, according to a survey of attitudes in 44 countries by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. ... Overwhelming majorities in France, Germany and Russia oppose the use of force to end Saddam's rule. Even in Britain, America's staunchest ally on Iraq, opinion is sharply divided: Fewer than half - 47 percent - favor using force to oust Hussein while an equal proportion disagree. ... When asked whether the United States was more interested in achieving stability in the region or more interested in controlling Iraqi oil reserves, majorities in Russia (76 percent), France (75 percent), and Germany (54 percent) said 'the U.S. wants to control Iraqi oil.'" (See also the survey report: "Global Gloom and Growing Anti-Americanism" (The Pew Research Center, 2002/12/04))

"The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing" (Lee Harris, Policy Review, from the December 2002 and January 2003 issue)
An interesting essay about the origin and consequences of "the global immiserization thesis: America has gotten rich by making other countries poor": "America-bashing has sadly come to be "the opium of the intellectual," to use the phrase Raymond Aron borrowed from Marx in order to characterize those who followed the latter into the twentieth century. And like opium it produces vivid and fantastic dreams. This is an intellectual tragedy. The Marxist left, whatever else one might say about it, has traditionally offered a valuable perspective from which even the greatest conservative thinkers have learned - including Schumpeter and Thomas Sowell. But if it cannot rid itself of its current penchant for fantasy ideology of the worst type, not only will it be incapable of serving this purpose; it will become worse than useless. It will become a justification for a return to that state of barbarism mankind has spent millennia struggling to transcend - a struggle that no one felt more keenly than Marx himself. For the essence of utopianism, according to Marx, is the refusal to acknowledge just how much suffering and pain every upward step of man’s ascent inflicts upon those who are taking it, and instead to dream that there are easier ways of getting there. There are not, and it is helpful to no party to pretend that there are. To argue that the great inequalities of wealth now existing between the advanced capitalist countries and the Third World can be cured by outbreaks of frenzied and irrational America-bashing is not only utopian; it is immoral."

"Blaming the victim of terrorism" (Cathy Young, The Boston Globe, 2002/12/02)
Young on the "disturbing tendency on the left to blame America first and to promote the notion of moral equivalency between Western democracies and their enemies.": "The other day, for instance, I came across an article about a just-published book called ''Snowball's Chance'' by American novelist John Reed, a satirical sequel/rejoinder to George Orwell's famous ''Animal Farm.'' In ''Animal Farm,'' an allegory of the Russian revolution, a group of farm animals rebel and drive away their human masters but end up under the brutal dictatorship of a Stalinesque pig. In ''Snowball's Chance,'' the farm embraces capitalism; the animals' living standards improve, but environmental degradation follows. Not content to leave it at that, Reed ends his anticapitalist fable with a transparent reference to Sept. 11: Forest animals angered by the destruction of their habitat, led by a group of beavers, attack the twin windmills (get it?) that supply power to the farm. The book ends with the irate farm animals planning their revenge and chanting, ''Kill the beavers!'' There are certain flaws in this charming allegory. The twin towers, for instance, were not just machines but buildings full of people, and protection of the environment does not rank high on Al Qaeda's agenda. But these are apparently minor details to Reed, a New Yorker who described his reaction to the attack on America as follows: ''I thought, 'Why would they do this to us?' ... The twin towers attack showed us that something is wrong with our system, too.'' In other words: What did the victim do to deserve it?"

"They'll have to think again about the Quiet American" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/12/01)
"I was in the Gulf six months ago, and I came to the conclusion that a majority of the people I met - somewhere between 55 and 70 per cent - were, to use the technical term, nuts. That's to say, they believed things that no rational person could believe. You'd be talking to an attractive, westernised, educated Bahraini lady doctor and she'd suddenly start babbling on about how there was no plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, all the footage had been faked by the government. "But I know someone who saw it from his office window," I said. "He just thinks he saw it," she replied. "The Americans know how to do these things." ... Well, about halfway through this last week in Canada, I realized I was beginning to feel about my homeland exactly the way I'd felt in Araby: these guys are nuts. Quebec's biggest English-language radio station, CJAD, conducted a listener poll on the question "Is George W Bush a moron?" Every single person said yes, he's definitely a moron, except for two who thought he was merely an idiot. On the letters pages, it was the same, except for Art Peel of Hamilton, Ontario, who complained that calling Bush a moron 'does a disservice to the mentally challenged, most of whom are kind, gentle people.'" (Note: Steyn also has a brand new website, SteynOnline, with the humble description "The One-Man Global Content Provider".)

 

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"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

› AOTW Archive



From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

Weekly archive

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2006/10/30 - 2006/11/05

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