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Here's another great observation from the article:

In Brazil, for example, access to the opinion of American conservatives has been banished. Their books – thousands of titles, many of them classics of political thought – are never translated and cannot be found in any university library. Their ideas are only available to public knowledge distorted as a caricature in the official communist version, created in 1971 by Soviet historian V. Nikitin in the book “The Ultras in the USA”. It is still submissively passed on today, from generation to generation, in schools and in newspapers, by a bunch of knowing sly militants and by a multitude of useful fools who do not have the least clue as to the origin of their own opinions.

Who, raised in this environment, can suspect that there is anything wrong with the media onslaught that turns George W. Bush into a sort of right-wing Stalin?

I think this goes a long ways to explain the peculiar hatred and ignorance that goes into European/LatAm conceptions of Americans.

I think this goes a long ways to explain the peculiar hatred and ignorance that goes into European/LatAm conceptions of Americans.

A while back I was talking with a reasonably well educated Belgian. He was busy blaming the US for the Rwandan massacre, not surprisingly.

I asked him if he was aware what Belgium did in the region when it was there colony. He was only vaguely aware, and was rather shocked to find his country had killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million. Then I pointed him to the origina of the Tutusi-Hutu conflict which were the colonial divide and conquer tactics of the Belgian government.

Then he shut up.

Now one can argue the US should have done more (though most who do wanted us to leave Hussein alone, go figure). But one cannot deny that Belgians have no right to complain about American policy in the region.

There is no question the Left spends much of its efforts to remove both thought and historical fact that does not agree with its current groupthink, and abroad they are much more successful then at home.

It truly is sad, if you talk with these people, to see the sheer level of propaganda they are exposed to. They watch the government controlled TV stations, listen to the government controlled radio stations, only read the government approved texts in school, and then criticize Americans for our supposed ignorance in disagreeing with whatever their government's line on the issues of the day is.

I think the current anti-American hate rampant in Europe is developing very much like that of the Middle East. Corrupt governments facing an angry populace have to funnel that anger somewhere or deal with its underlying causes. So in the Middle East the source of all problems is the Great and Little Satans. And in Europe and much of Latin Am the source of all problems is the anti-enviromental American Empire.