Anti-Americanism Is Older Than You May Think:

Bloomberg ^ | 11/25/03 | Andrew Ferguson

[Pikamax]

Andrew Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.

Anti-Americanism Is Older Than You May Think: Andrew Ferguson Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Once upon a time, anti-Americanism was scientific. Now it's merely ubiquitous.

Or so at least it seems to an American who travels abroad -- especially if he's President George W. Bush, whose visit to London last week set off still more expressions of anti-American sentiment and, even worse, heavy-breathing lamentations from pundits inside and outside the U.S.

[speedy]

People always hate Number One -- the Brits were hated when they had the world empire, as were the Romans. Simple jealousy. So long as they hate us for being powerful and influential, it's all good. Besides, if we are really hated that much, why does much of the world try to come here to live?

[Crazieman]

I don't know about you, but I never grow tired of watching people pile into rickety boats to sail the shark infested waters to reach freedom, prosperity, opportunity, and escape massive government oppression.

That journey from Key West to Cuba...

</Sarcasm>

[Neophyte]

Let's start with some numbers, which don't lie. An international poll...

Polls are best known for numbers which lie.

[Wonder Warthog]

It isn't "anti-Americanism" so much as the innate "Euro-superiority". The effete snobs in Europe simply hate it that an upstart bunch of non-aristocrats routinely out-perform Europe in virtually every measure of comparison.

[Neophyte]

Me thinks, there is no mistery in the reflexive anti-Americanism of (Euro)mob.

They're Lefties, aren't they? And they see America as the last obstacle which doesn't allow their collectivist ideology to conquer the world.

[speedy]

Precisely. People DO vote with their feet. Haiti never has an immigration problem. You can tell what Mugabe is really like by the fact that the former great influx of people to Zimbabwe is now an exodus. Liberals are completely blind on these issues.

[Bad Sheep]

Anti-Americanism is a lot like energy. Ever since the time of the time of the Revolution, it has been neither created nor destroyed; it's simply passed on from country to country.

[speedy]

A certain segment of the Euros -- mainly the intellectual classes -- have always felt that way. Their leftist sympathizers over here just join the chorus. They just don't understand how these dreadful declasse Americans can be so productive and innovative. And glad to see someone dusting off the old Spiro Agnew phrase book -- remember his "effete corps of impudent snobs?" Right up there with "nattering nabobs of negativism."

[F14 Pilot]

Ping ~!

[observer5]

"It isn't "anti-Americanism" so much as the innate "Euro-superiority". The effete snobs in Europe simply hate it that an upstart bunch of non-aristocrats routinely out-perform Europe in virtually every measure of comparison."

The Euros think they are the cream of evolution, the cradle of civilization and they cannot stand the idea of some texan cowboy overruling them again and again.

That is what they hate about Bush.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Right up there with "nattering nabobs of negativism.""

How about "pusillanimous poltroons of populism" (aka liberals)?

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

the original theorists of anti-Americanism, the racists and the royalists, were right: The influence of the U.S. was, by their lights, disastrous, even fatal, as it eventually helped undo what they most prized.

America--at least "conservative" America--is pragmatic, and expects judgement based on results rather than on pedigree. We elected GWB with very little reference to his relation to P41--and despite more than because he is also the son of GHWB, we might elect the successful two-term Governor of Florida one day. Transparently American "conservatism" is progressive.

Equally clearly, it is self-described "progressive" American attitudes which are compatible with "old Europe" attitudes. That is the source of the reactionary notion that the "pie" of goods and services--and of the titles of prestige and entitlement known as "jobs"--is fixed and can/must be "fairly" divided by those who lust for the power to do so. Rather than, in the "conservative" American paradigm, by those who succeed on their own account in serving others with valuable goods and helpful services--and indeed with those titles of social utility, jobs.

And that "old Europe" attitude is an anachronism in the world of the globalization of American "what-have-you-done-for-me-lately" dynamism. "What-have-you-done-for-me-lately"ism is intimidating not only to "progressives" but to most of us. But we are determined that "our posterity" should have "the blessings of liberty"--of the ability to change according to current judgement as well as to hold on to institutions of stability--our written Constitution not least among the latter.

[Verginius Rufus]

According to Willard Sterne Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life, page 342, in his Notes on the State of Virginia Jefferson was responding to an assertion by the French naturalist Comte Georges de Buffon that there was a "degenerative" process in the species of North America that made men and animals smaller in size and less vital than in Europe.

[blackie]

Screw the Euro-trash!

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[nuconvert]

This guy's an idiot