Them vs. U.S. (GOOD READ FOR AMERICANS)

The headline in a recent National Review magazine was certainly an attention-grabber: "Bomb Canada: The Case for War." But such rhetoric was perhaps justified by the magazine cover, which showed four red-coated Mounties on horseback above a banner that read "Wimps!"

Naturally, I bought the magazine to find out about "Canada's whiny and weak anti-Americanism."

I didn't take the article too seriously. I took statements such as "nothing would be better for Canada than a rabble-rousing, American-style democracy" and Canada is "not a serious country anymore" for what they were: a sardonic poke at the sanctimoniousness of Canadians who, even as they pretend to be a moral superpower, shelter beneath the U.S. military and economic umbrella. But then along came prime ministerial spokeswoman Francoise Ducros and the "moron affair."

It was not just the intellectual inanity of the Ducros remark that made it so embarrassing, but the intellectual obtuseness it reflected. In calling President Bush a "moron," she implied that the United States is somehow wrong to defend itself as it sees fit against terrorist attacks, and, indeed, that it is somehow at fault for those attacks.

But to hear such an inherently anti-Americanist sentiment at the highest levels of the Canadian government was disturbing not only because of the ignorance it betrayed but because such attitudes can lead to policies harmful to our relationship with the United States.

There is nothing new about Canadians' anti-Americanism, of course. Historically, "not being American" is a cornerstone of our identity. Resenting Americans allows us to feel good about our inadequacies.

Throughout the Cold War, many Canadians were convinced that the United States would be responsible for starting a nuclear war. (Why nobody thought the Soviets equally or even more likely to touch off the nuclear holocaust always puzzled me.)

The anti-Americanism we see now, however, seems particularly virulent and widespread. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that the image of the United States is increasingly tarnished everywhere, but especially in the Middle East and in Central and Southeast Asia. Considering the high Muslim populations in these regions, such hostility is understandable, if misinformed.

But why would someone like British playwright Harold Pinter declare the United States "the greatest source of terrorism on Earth"? How those who know better can regard the United States as an evil empire when the weight of historical evidence shows such views are unwarranted is an intellectual obscenity.

The anti-American intelligentsia conveniently forget it was the United States that stopped the slaughter of Muslims in the Balkans while Europe's politicians dithered. That same intelligentsia warned that the Russians would never accept NATO expansion, yet NATO now includes nearly every former Soviet satellite. All the best minds mocked the anti-communism of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan. And where's the Soviet Union now?

As British journalist Brian Appleyard once observed: "The Americans saved Europe from barbarism in two world wars. After the Second World War, they rebuilt the continent from ashes. They confronted and peacefully defeated Soviet communism, the most murderous system ever devised by man."

Muslims might argue that none of this applies to them, that the United States has always been hostile to Arab countries. But this, too, is a distortion of history.

When Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, the United States intervened to stop Britain, France and Israel from overthrowing the Nasser regime. During the Cold War, the United States supported Islamic regimes such as Saudi Arabia against radical Arab nationalism.

In 1973, the United States came to Egypt's rescue when it forced the Israelis to accept a cease-fire that ended the Yom Kippur War. Today, the Americans supply Egypt with billions in aid, asking only that it keep the peace with Israel.

In 1982, the United States even saved Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from Israel's wrath by arranging to get him safely out of Beirut. When Arafat backed Iraq during the Persian Gulf War, the United States continued to sponsor him as the only one who could negotiate a peace with Israel. Finally, the United States aided Muslims fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

As Middle East specialist Barry Rubin writes in his book Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East, "Arab anti-American radicals have distorted the record, ignoring all the positive examples and focusing only on U.S. support for Israel."

So why, against all sense and evidence, is anti-Americanism so prevalent? Oddly enough, French intellectuals provide the most credible answer.

Jean-Francois Revel, in his new book L'Obsession anti-americaine, and Philippe Roger, in his book L'Ennemi americain, argue that anti-Americanism is not necessarily connected to anything people fear the United States might do, but rather to their own inadequacies. The inability of Europe to repeat the economic success of the United States, the failure of European social policies, the fracturing of national identity in the face of immigration and a post-imperial malaise born of waning global influence have all engendered an inferiority complex among European intellectuals. For them, the economic and military supremacy of the United States is a discomfiting reproach to Europeans' presumed cultural superiority.

Revel argues that the geopolitical rise of the United States is directly linked to Europe's abandonment of its responsibilities to defend Western values. "American unilateralism," he writes, "is the consequence, not the cause, of the reduction of power in the rest of the world."

Arab leaders also readily adopt anti-American attitudes as a way to divert attention from their own economic and political failings. As Rubin says, "For years now, anti-Americanism has served as means of last resort by which failed political systems and movements in the Middle East try to improve their standing."

However, anti-Americanism also exposes a deep anxiety at the heart of Muslim culture. Throughout the Middle East, modern ideas and practices are perceived as a threat to traditional ways of life. Notions of privatization, equality for women, institutions of civil society and freedom of speech run counter to deeply rooted patterns of social conduct and religious verities.

Not surprisingly, such modern ideas are associated with the United States. Thus, anti-Americanism is a protest of modernity, a response to the conflicts of a world in which long-established values and concepts no longer protect people from a sense of rootlessness and loss of meaning. As sociologist Paul Hollander explains in a recent essay in The New Criterion, "Much of what people fear or dislike about American society and culture is synonymous with modernity."

So what should the United States do about this? The answer is: nothing. The fact is that nobody likes a hegemon. The city-states of ancient Greece objected to Athens' overlordship. The Roman imperium was hated by subjects even as they enjoyed the security provided by legionnaires fighting on the frontiers. Even the British Empire, which offered the most enlightened imperial rule ever seen, was often resented.

Now it is the turn of Americans to suffer the consequences of resentment and envy. Presumably, they are sufficiently confident in their cause to take the anti-American posturing for what it really reflects: the congenital inability of others to examine their own self-inflicted failings.

In truth, "American imperialism" offers the Arab world a better future than anything available to them from their own leaders. It is well to recall that in the months before the Afghanistan campaign in 2001, the so-called experts warned of an explosion in the "Arab street." What actually happened was that the Arab world went very quiet at the demonstration of U.S. power, while on the streets of Kabul, Afghan women greeted American soldiers as liberators.

Given this, it would a mistake for the United States to fret about its unpopularity. As Middle East analyst Fouad Ajami writes in Foreign Affairs, "It is the fate of great powers that provide order to do so against the background of a world that takes the protection while it bemoans the heavy hand of the protector." What matters in the end is whether the United States, in pursuit of its own valid interests, furthers the cause of global security such that all people ultimately benefit.

The Americans
Gordon Sinclair
Radio Station CFBR 1010
2 St. Clair Avenue West
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

"LET'S BE PERSONAL"
Broadcast June 5, 1973
CFRB, Toronto, Ontario
Topic: "The Americans"

The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth.

As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did.

They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.

When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.

The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans.

I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes.

Come on... let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 107? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon?

You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them ... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.

When the Americans get out of this bind ... as they will... who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy the Israel bonds, Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble.

Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles.

I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke.

This year's disasters .. with the year less than half-over… has taken it all and nobody...but nobody... has helped.

The True Story of how
"The Americans" came to be and the
magnificent events that followed its
original broadcast
~~~o~~~

On June 5, 1973, Gordon Sinclair sat up in bed in Toronto and turned on his TV set. The United States had just pulled out of the Vietnamese War which had ended in a stalemate - a war fought daily on TV, over the radio and in the press. The aftermath of that war resulted in a world-wide sell-off of American investments, prices tumbled, the United States economy was in trouble. The war had also divided the American people, and at home and abroad it seemed everyone was lambasting the United States.
He turned on his radio, twisted the dial and turned it off. He picked up the morning paper. In print, he saw in headlines what he had found on TV and radio - the Americans were taking a verbal beating from nations around the world. Disgusted with what he saw and heard, he was outraged!

At 10:30, on his arrival at CFRB to prepare his two pre-noon broadcasts, he strode into his office and "dashed-off" two pages in 20 minutes for LET'S BE PERSONAL at 11:45 am, and then turned to writing his 11:50 newscast that was to follow. At 12:01 pm, the script for LET'S BE PERSONAL was dropped on the desk of his secretary who scanned the pages for a suitable heading and then wrote "Americans"" across the top and filed it away. The phones were already ringing.

Gordon Sinclair could not have written a book that could have had a greater impact in the world than his two-page script for THE AMERICANS. A book should have been written on the events that followed. But, no one at CFRB, including Sinclair himself, could have envisioned the reaction of the people of the United States - from presidents - state governors - Congress - the Senate - all media including TV, radio, newspapers, magazines - and from the "ordinary" American on the street. Nor, could have the Canadian government - stunned by the response to what has come to be regarded as one of Canada's greatest public relations feats in the history of our relations with the United States of America.

But, how did Sinclair's tribute to Americans reach them? It had been swept across the United States at the speed of a prairie fire by American radio stations - first, a station in Buffalo called and asked to be fed a tape copy of the broadcast with permission to use - both freely given. Nearby American stations obtained copies from Buffalo or called direct. By the time it reached the Washington, DC area, a station had superimposed Sinc's broadcast over an instrumental version of BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER, and was repeating it at fixed times several times-a-day.

Congressmen and Senators heard it. It was read several times into the Congressional Record. Assuming that it was on a phono (33 1/3 rpm), Americans started a search for a copy. CFRB was contacted. To satisfy the demand, CFRB started to make arrangements with AVCO, an American record company, to manufacture and distribute it as a "single".

As they were finalizing a contract that would see all royalties which would normally be due Gordon Sinclair be paid (at his request) to the American Red Cross. Word was received that an unauthorized record, using Sinclair's script but read by another broadcaster, was already flooding the US market. (Subsequently, on learning that this broadcaster had agreed to turn over his royalties to the Red Cross, no legal action was taken).

Sinclair's recording of his own work (to which Avco had added a stirring rendition of THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC) did finally reach record stores, and sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but the potential numbers were depressed by the sale of the infringing record. Other record producers and performers (including Tex Ritter) obtained legal permission to make their own versions. In Ritter's case, because of the first-person style of the script, Tex preceded his performance with a proper credit to Sinclair as the author. The American Red Cross received millions of dollars in royalties, and Gordon Sinclair was present at a special ceremony acknowledging his donation.

Advertisers using print media contacted CFRB for permission to publish the text in a non-commercial manner; industrial plants asked for the right to print the script in leaflet form to handout to their employees.

Gordon Sinclair received invitations to attend and be honoured at many functions in the United States which, by number and due to family health problems at the time, he had to decline. However, CFRB newscaster Charles Doering, was flown to Washington to give a public reading of THE AMERICANS to the 28th National Convention of the United States Air Force Association, held September 18, 1974 at the Sheraton Park Hotel. His presentation was performed with the on-stage backing of the U.S. Air Force Concert Band, joined by the 100-voice Singing Sergeants in a special arrangement of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

8 years after the first broadcast of THE AMERICANS, U.S. President Ronald Reagan made his first official visit to Canada. At the welcoming ceremonies on Parliament Hill, the new President praised "the Canadian journalist who wrote that (tribute)" to the United States when it needed a friend. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had Sinclair flown to Ottawa to be his guest at the reception that evening.

Sinc had a long and pleasant conversation with Mr. Reagan. The President told him that he had a copy of the record of THE AMERICANS at his California ranch home when he was governor of the state, and played it from time to time when things looked gloomy.

On the evening of May 15th, 1984, following a regular day's broadcasting, Gordon Sinclair suffered a heart attack. He died on May 17th. As the word of his illness spread throughout the United States, calls inquiring about his condition had been received from as far away as Texas. The editorial in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune of May 28th was typical of the reaction of the United States news media - A GOOD FRIEND PASSES ON.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan: "I know I speak for all Americans in saying the radio editorial Gordon wrote in 1973 praising the accomplishments of the United States was a wonderful inspiration. It was not only critics abroad who forgot this nation's many great achievements, but even critics here at home. Gordon Sinclair reminded us to take pride in our nation's fundamental values."

Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau: "Gordon Sinclair's death ends one of the longest and most remarkable careers in Canadian Journalism. His wit, irreverence, bluntness and off-beat views have been part of the media landscape for so long that many Canadians had come to believe he would always be there."

Following a private family service, two thousand people from all walks of life filled Nathan Phillips Square in front of Toronto's City Hall for a public service of remembrance organized by Mayor Art Eggleton. Dignitaries joining him on the platform were Ontario Lieutenant-Governor, John Black Aird; the Premier of Ontario, William Davis; and Metro Chairman Paul Godfrey. Tens of thousands more joined them through CFRB's live broadcast of the service which began symbolically at 11:45 - the regular time of Sinc's daily broadcast of LET'S BE PERSONAL.

As Ontario Premier William Davis said of him "The name GORDON SINCLAIR could become the classic definition of a full life."

(recalled by J. Lyman Potts who was "there")

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