More insightful commentary from Steven Den Beste on the gulf between European and American culture, and the persistent misunderstanding by Europeans of Americans:
Too many of Europe’s opinion makers are living in a delusional world anyway. They believe that raising taxes and increasing social spending doesn’t stifle economic growth, and that labor laws which prevent layoffs increase employment. They think they can catch up to the US economically by 2010. They think all disagreements can be settled through negotiations and that no one needs or should have a military any longer. They think all citizens should rely on the state to protect them from criminals, and any who try to protect themselves should be punished.
They think they’re still important, and they think that the world views them that way. Amidst that great sea of delusion, it’s hardly surprising that they also think America is becoming more and more European as it finally grows up, and that deep down we admire them and want to be more like them.
Nor will it be surprising that they will continue to find our behavior bewildering and infuriating as they continue to botch their dealings with us.
I continue to maintain that a large part of anti-Americanism is aesthetic in nature. The fact that American popular culture is largely trivial and vulgar make people think that Americans will be that way in all areas, and need European sophistication in politics as well as art.
Unfortunately, not only is American popular culture virulently contagious, the trivial, vulgar, happy-go-lucky Americans have the bad habit of actually buckling down when things get serious, and dealing with problems (usually the cultured, sophisticated European habit of massacring each other or trying to conquer the world) without anyone else’s help.
You’d think they’d have learned to be all noble and arty after having saved the world three times in the past century, but no, it’s back to monster trucks and Sex in the City.
Interesting.
What are you trying to say? We should all love America??
Not at all. Merely that one should not criticize America for being un-European. The whole point of America is that it was founded by people who didn’t want to be in Europe anymore.
And quite frankly, there’s not much to admire about Europe, in my opinion.
Great art, culture and history? All created by tyrants bestriding the backs of countless helpless peasants. I’ll take monster trucks, myself.
Social programs? Ask your grandchildren what they think of your frittering away _their_ meagre incomes.
Investigate the current scandal surrounding the UN/Iraqi oil-for-food program for another great example of European sophistication and morality.
Or ask the ghosts of Srebrenica what they feel about European nonviolence.
Norway is the only country in the world who sets aside money for future generations, I am pretty sure. The others are too busy paying off their enourmous debts. Oh yes and fighting war.
Your last sentence is ambiguous in English, but I’ll assume you mean “fighting against war” rather than “fighting in wars”.
If so, can you tell me which wars they have prevented? The Balkan wars? Rawanda? Can you name even one war that Europeans have prevented in the last half-century?
And where do those “enormous debts” come from? Socialist programs.
I meant they wage war. Like The States… whose national debt is exactly 7126029671639.74 this second. What socialist program is to blame for that??
Reagan’s military buildup in the 80’s, that provided the last nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union, and Clinton’s socialist policies in the 90’s.
You will find also that the US’s debt, in terms of percentage of GDP, is much lower than European countries’.