Posted on 04/13/2003 6:59:15 AM PDT by jalisco555
WASHINGTON, April 12 (UPI) -- Why do they hate us? This question has been asked incessantly since Sept. 11, 2001. Sometimes it is asked about Muslims in general; sometimes about the Arab world in particular.
However, it is worth considering the possibility that the root source of anti-Americanism in the world lies in the deep-rooted anti-modern tradition of Continental Europe.
Just as the Baathist movement lately of Iraq and still in power in Syria is a localized variant of European fascism, the broader anti-Americanism currently fashionable on all continents comes ultimately from what some have called the Industrial Counter-Revolution. This is a comprehensive category for the various reactions in Europe against the program of the Industrial and Democratic Revolutions, or liberalism in the classical sense -- individualism, free markets, and technological and social progress.
Scholars such as Alan Macfarlane have found that individualistic social patterns (such as a preference for nuclear over extended families) have been very deep-seated in England, going back at least to the 14th century, while the reverse has been true in Continental Europe up to the Industrial Revolution.
This might suggest that both fascism and communism emerged on the European continent as a search for the lost security (at the expense of individual independence) of the extended family under the patriarchal rule of the paterfamilias in the traditional Continental society shattered by the Industrial Revolution.
Another explanation, not mutually exclusive with the above, may lie in seeing the Holocaust not as an isolated instance of social madness, but the latter half of a great historical cycle beginning with the emancipation of Europe's Jews during the Napoleonic Wars.
Although the Anglosphere began the Industrial Revolution in the 17th century, the period roughly from 1830 through 1930 saw a very rapid expansion of that revolution in Western Europe, and most particularly in German-speaking Europe. This expansion resulted in the emergence of a brilliant and dynamic civilization.
Given the prominence of Jewish Europeans in that civilization, it must be asked whether one of its principal stimuli was not the excitement of mutual discovery, in which newly emancipated Jews brought their analytical skills honed by their tradition of scholarship and debate, while accessing the much wider world of Western science, literature, and scholarship from which they had previously been closed off?
How can we calculate how much more dynamism was added by the everyday interaction of people who had previously been kept in parallel and uncommunicative spheres? The Germanosphere, including not just the Second Reich, but Austria-Hungary, German Switzerland, and the German-speaking communities of Eastern Europe and the Americas, really might better be dubbed the Judaeo-Germanosphere during that period.
Continental European Jews, because they owed their very presence in the larger civilization to the values of liberalism and modernism, were one of the first and most obvious targets of the Industrial Counter-Revolution.
The collapse of globalization and consequent rise of totalitarianism set the stage for the end of the great Judaeo-German hybrid civilization of Europe and its French counterpart. Those European Jews who were left alive at the end of the war overwhelmingly desired to leave, and they left to two destinations: Israel, and the Anglosphere.
With this emigration, on top of the previous great Jewish emigration to London and New York in the late 19th century, much of the energy, creativity and contributions of European Jews were given to the Anglosphere rather than the Continent. The cost to the Continent, and the benefits to the Anglosphere has never, to my knowledge, been calculated. The cost might never be calculable, but it is real.
Continental Europeans, helped by the Marshall Plan and American investment, rebuilt their countries with vigor after 1945. Led by the last generations to mature in the environment of the hybrid Jewish-European civilization, Europe seemed to pick up where it left off in 1933.
Gradually, however, Europe seemed to run out of creativity, in everything from arts, to academia, to demographic vigor, to the will to political reform. Endless rehashing of elsewhere-discredited Marxism replaced creative political thought. Overt fascism and national chauvinism were banned, but a new Euro-chauvinism took its place, loudly proclaiming the superiority of European ways over crude American ones -- a new chauvinism on a wider scale, based like the old national chauvinism primarily on resentment.
It may be coincidence, but these new generations are the ones who grew up without the experience of studying, working and socializing with substantial numbers of Jews. Can this have no effect on politics?
Consider that the current war has seen the rapid re-emergence of the classical anti-Semitic themes in Europe, and coming from the same classes and types that supported the previous anti-globalization revolt of the 1920s and 1930s. The whitewashing of anti-Semitism as "anti-Zionism" grows more and more transparent by the day. French television has begun to adopt the terminology of the Vichy propagandists in reporting on the "Anglo-American attack" on Iraq. "Neo-con" serves the same code-word duty that "rootless cosmopolite" did in Stalin's anti-Jewish purges.
The widespread anti-Americanism in the world, of which Continental Europe is the ultimate source, has almost nothing to do with the character of President George W. Bush or the current administration, or other such cosmetic issues.
The modern world was first carried forward by two great civilizations. The Anglosphere was one. The dynamic industrializing culture of 19th century Continental Europe, to which the spark of the Judaeo-Christian encounter was so important, was the other. That culture committed suicide in the '30s. Perhaps its successor is not the revival of that culture, but rather its zombie.
In considering the Holocaust, most attention has been given to its direct victims, as is appropriate. However, we must also consider that it was a form of self-administered lobotomy for Continental European culture.
It would not be surprising if the twin anti-modernist themes of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, now rapidly coalescing into a single nasty mess visible in many of the pro-Saddam demonstrations of the past year, become once again the predominant political-cultural theme in Western Continental Europe, overwhelming the decent and positive forces there that had previously prevailed.
And we should not be surprised if such people hate us.
That's my attitude, anyway. But of course I'm not a Constitutional lawyer and I'm also not in the position to deport anyone. Regrettably.
LOL! You should see MY list: Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, North Korea, Cuba, France.... oh, it's just like Christmas morning and I don't know which lovely present to rip open first!
The Jews are the canaries in the societal coal mine.
And, in Europe right now, the air is getting pretty foul...
I might be mistaken, but I believe the Jews were comparatively well-treated, as were most minorities, during the heyday of the Ottoman Empire.
However, as the Empire went into decline, the lot of the Jews became steadily worse.
You certainly think this "bookful" is a very small one, if you suggest that I will write it here in a few moments. You just proved my point.
...I would point out that Jews have made greater contributions in law and finance...
Wow, I didn't know that Albert Einstein, Gustav Mahler, Marc Chagall, Arthur Rubinstein, Steven Spielberg, Sergei Eisenstein, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Johann Strauss, Felix Mendelssohn, Mark Rothko, Niels Bohr and Leonardo da Vinci were all in law and finance. I learn something every day.
First of all, we don't deport natural-born citizens. Second of all, it is incorrect to assume that changing the government is disallowed here. In fact, our founding fathers encouraged us to keep that possibility open, both in what they said in their speeches and letters, as well as in the laws they established. We can vote people with whom we disagree out of office, and we can amend the constitution. We can appoint judges who have different views (via our elected officials) as well as voting for them in our local communities.
So it's well within anyone's rights to propose a change to our laws that differs from my values and yours, even if those changes are counter to any current constitutional amendment.
One should be aware, however, that changing the Constitution is a difficult process, and can't be done without either a referendum or a 2/3 congressional vote. These are almost impossible for benign sounding legislation (because most of us believe our Constitution is quite adequate), let alone radical sounding ideas such as banning private property.
But it is not treasonous to propose banning private property. It's just stupid.
If we start imprisoning, deporting, or killing people just because we disagree with them, then we lose the core values we place on free speech and privacy. And we dishonor those who have fallen in defense of the Declaration of Independence, as well as the Bill of Rights.
The problems we've been facing in our country with Marxism and Islamic extremism are counterable with ordinary means: Americans have to get back to the basics of our values, both in our family units and in our dealings with each other. We need to teach people who've immigrated into this country what it means to be American, as well.
I think many Americans (not here on Free Republic) forgot who they were; 9/11 gave us all a wakeup call. Nevermind that Janeane Garafalo hasn't heard it yet -- the President's approval polls suggest most have.
My views about immigrants are harsh. First, now is not the time for us to be welcoming people into our country while we are trying to sort out who hates us and who doesn't. Secondly, I'm convinced that green card holders and naturalized citizens are fair game for "unconstitutional" investigations. Human rights apply, but we are at war now; the Bill of Rights is for native born Americans. And anyone who opposes racial or religious profiling at a time like this is playing into the hands of Islamofacsists as useful idiots. But that's why we voted for Republicans this last election. That's why Bush is in office. That's why America will survive -- people did start waking up.
But notice how Americans are working within Constitutional limits to acheive their patriotism. Also, think back to the dark days of the 1970s when it was even harder to be patriotic. Many FReepers were holding their candles under a bushel in those awful days. But most worked to express their patriotism within the Constitution, with tolerance, and nonviolently. This is why it is often said now that the Democrats and other liberals don't know how to be the underdog. Conservatives and other patriots do. They know how to be factual with their arguments. They know how to disagree respectfully. And now they're having a field day with the Appeaseniks, many of whom can only utter a cursing insult when cornered in an argument.
Whoops... left out a word. High level of literacy. First off, most Jews were expected to learn how to read at a time when most people in Europe weren't. Also -- and I think you noted this later in the thread -- Jews were more active in commerce, particularly money-lending, but other aspects of trade as well.
When literacy and commerce become more important within European civilization, the Jews were a group already well-prepared in that area, allowing them to rise a more prominent role in society.
I do take issue w/ the premise that the "anglosphere" is more dynamic primarily through the actions of its jewish constituency. Certainly Jews have contribured greatly to the anglo culture, but then so has every other race. Indeed, it is the ability of the anglo world to embrace ideas and people from all over that has made it so strong.
For example, while the french were guarding their language against polluting foreign words English was incorporating words, expressions, and ideas from all comers. For this reason English is the lingua franca (irony intended) of the world. Likewise while the germans were masturbating about pan-germanic greatness and the purity of their blood, the anglos were comingling culture and blood indiscriminately.
Therefore, it is the old european xenophobia that has lead, as it always must, to their current stagnation. And hence their feeling of impotence from which hatred, envy and malice flow.
BTW, to assert that the Jews have been a bulwark against the forces of Marxism is absurd.
We're losing them anyway, as Marxists on college campus pass "hate speech" rules and lawmakers in the public forum pass "hate crime" laws that include speech. Is it more noble to lose them this way? And I really feel like I've made it clear that it wouldn't be just because "we disagree." There are plenty of folks I disagree with that don't qualify for the kind of action I'm talking about.
Very far from the truth. What I know compared to what I want to know is a drop in the ocean.
...Call me a barbarian if you want but I'll take an Alan Greenspan over any of the ones in your list with the exception of Einstein...
This is priceless! Comparing greatness to a common idiot. The word "barbarian" is quite insufficient.
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