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"European Anti-Americanism: Do We Deserve It?"

Thread ID: 20294 | Posts: 9 | Started: 2005-09-19

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Petr [OP]

2005-09-19 16:51 | User Profile

[I]I think this is a pretty balanced take on this complicated issue - personally I seem to have noticed that this is a typical example of "[I]the grass is greener on the other side of the field[/I]"-syndrome at work on both sides.

Those Americans who are unhappy with the state of their own culture tend to have naivély romantic ideas on the old venerable civilization of Europe today, and on the other hand, Europeans who feel themselves suffocating under impotent socialist governments (Massachusetts may give you Yanks some idea what we are talking about in here) tend to dream about America as a Wild West, a land of "noble savages" untouched by effete decadence...[/I]

[url]http://www.markgodfrey.com/exen/index.php/weblog/comments/european_anti_americanism_de_we_deserve_it/[/url]

[FONT=Times New Roman] [SIZE=5]European Anti-Americanism: Do We Deserve It?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Is anti-Americanism in Europe deserved? It’s a complex issue and there are many factors bearing on it. I read a story today about Tony Blair complaining to Rupert Murdoch about the Anti-Americanism at the BBC, as evidenced in its Katrina reporting. While it is true that Blair needs Murdoch to use his bully pulpit at Fox to shore up support for him in the US, I want to look at this prevailing sense of anti-Americanism that we read so much about, and that we are told to revile by our patriotic propaganidists at NewsMax, Fox, and Clear Channel.

Upon examination we find that wht the propaganists say about European anti-AMericanism is true. But it is a half-truth, which is the most effective sort of lie. European chauvinism and widespread sympathies for their cradle to grave socialism are important factors here, a social attitude which is considered “civilized,” as over against the still prevailing, though mostly titular, ethos in the Wild West of “self-reliance”. To some extent these are sterotypes, but there is a kernel of truth here. Some of it is due to America’s economic prowess in overseas markets, where Europe has imperial aspirations of its own. Still more, it is due to the US’s globalist foreign and economic policies. Some of it is just plain jealousy, for if you have ever been to Europe you would understand that, on a “capitalist” scale of values, the average living standards are well below those in the US in most EU nations.

With unemployment in Germany officially admitted to be at 11% (and likely significantly higher), and other socialist-fascist economies struggling under the burden of their entitlement programs and their large-industry subsidies, it is no wonder we are seeing Euro-gloating at the Katrina disaster, as ugly as that might be. America is perceived as an “arrogant bully”, and in some respects it is. It’s success is resented, because it is not tempered with what Europeans think is a dignified humility. It is the arrogance part that the Europeans really despise. The fact that most American high school graduates can’t locate France on a map if you color the area between Germany and Spain bright yellow, should not only be bothersome to Europeans, but to American parents as well. For Europe is our cradle as a race. Our history as a “people” begins before Jamestown, indeed it is a continuum into the immemorial mists of Europe.

America’s “manifest destiny and” it’s “self-assuredness” are alien to the European consciousness that has witnessed failure, hardship, humiliation, and privation. It’s Puritanism and exceptionalism foreign to Europe’s morally laissez faire sensibility. Indeed, the Puritan “adding to the law” is the chief source of the loss of biblical liberty in this country. It is Puritanism that later devolved into “liberalism.” Liberalism IS Puritanism, sans God. The first prisons were Puritan, though the Bible makes no provision for them. The idea of “penitence” replaced the idea of restitution. It is through this sad devolution that we have lost our liberty: liberty to smoke and drink, liberty to think and say, liberty to dispose of property, liberty to be free from economic coercion and the monopolization and degradation of the money supply. The Bible defines what is human. When we abandon the Bible we abandon it for the satanic view of humanity: regimentation, Prussianism, impersonal mechanism, monism, universalism and the “commodification” of time. These are ancient values. Babylonian values. Babylon is Mordor, where the machine rules over the man.

What Europe resents is the widespread American attitude that Europe is inherently inferior, that it is chock-a-block with cowards and sub-humans. Perhaps some of this complaint against her is deserved, but Europe is also a center of history and experience, full of people who think they have a better handle on what life is for, and how to better live it. A human scale of values, rather than a corporate scale. But this is a vanishing sentiment, and the values are vanishing, as Europe becomes inundated with cosmopolitan culture. Imperial culture. As its regionalism dies.

As kinists, we reject the advanced socialism-fascism of Europe, we reject its atheism and abandonment of its Christian heritage. We reject its “humanity,” for it is a humanity improperly defined and badly composed. We reject its suicidal racial delusion, and the delusions of equality. But there are also values we embrace, and one of these is the notion that life is not a corporate value. It is not defined in a boardroom and not to be estimated on a spreadsheet. That there are values that transcend economic values. Spiritual values that obtain to a “people,” and preserve their identity. It is a scale of values that prizes the small, the personal, the immediate, the homemade, the local, the imperfect. This scale of values does not permit the devaluing of life to the extent that we are willing to send other families sons to far away places to give their blood for abstractions like freedom and democracy. An atheistic, socialist-fascist, capitalist, mechanized, inhumane society cannot define these values properly. It has lost it’s center and its national sanity. The “classical” scale of values is one that recognizes “fallenness” by abandoning the ancient Babylonian ideal of homogenization. In the Americanization of Europe, we have created a rival power in the Babylonian project. And we are paying the price. These are generalizations of course, but some of them “stick.”

On one score Americans are dead wrong, and that is on the idea of European “cowardice.” The European idea that peace is worth having -not at any cost, but certainly at the cost of the unending expansion of the list of foreign adventures that fall under the rubric of vital national interests. It is certainly so at the cost of foreign policy being driven by the interests of anti-nationalist, anti-racialist, trans-national corporations for the purpose of market expansion, cost control, and resource security, and the utlimate value shareholder profits. Absentee landlords of corporate assimilation. Value-free robots scouring the earth for “resources.” These are not reasons for the abandonment of peace.

The founders of the early republic by-and-large treasured peace, treasured the inward-looking focus of the fledgling nation. Bound and determined were they to avoid the strife and contentions of European rivalries and intrigues. America was to be an a-historical nation (read “people”), it’s vast farmlands slumbering under a temperate sun. It’s people were to be busy with the concerns of life, unworried and unhurried by the requirements of “greatness.” An inward looking America is not a less powerful America. An America that recovers the biblical scale of values will at the same time recover its humanness. It will not oppress its poor and its widows. it will not permit society to be vitimized by the normalization of, and acclimatization to, evil. It will not trap men into wage slavery. It will make men free and independent. It will divest them from the terrible costs of “global hegemony.”

Maybe it’s time for that kind of America again.

Link: [I]Blair complans to Murdoch of BBC’s Anti_Americanism[/I]

[url]http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050917/wl_uk_afp/usbritainblairbbc_050917223538[/url]

[B]Posted by Mark on 09/19 at 12:03 PM [/B][/SIZE][/FONT]

xmetalhead

2005-09-19 17:20 | User Profile

I cannot honestly understand how America of the 2005 vintage can be envied by Europeans.

weisbrot

2005-09-19 17:40 | User Profile

Recently a very bright customer from Canada surprised me with his insistence that the main reason for my perception of a lack of tension and wariness (and much more friendliness and eye contact) was due mainly to their gun control and the lack thereof in the US. He believed that nearly every citizen in LA and in other major cities is allowed to and actually does carry concealed weapons, ready to blast away at any moment the random offensive eye contact is made.

A couple of long walks around downtown Ottawa would tell any aware American all he needs to know. The US and Canadian media have convinced these mild-mannered folk that white Americans and their guns cause nearly all the violent crime in the country. It's almost as amazing as the number of white American who believe the same.

Okiereddust

2005-09-19 19:45 | User Profile

[QUOTE=weisbrot]Recently a very bright customer from Canada surprised me with his insistence that the main reason for my perception of a lack of tension and wariness (and much more friendliness and eye contact) was due mainly to their gun control and the lack thereof in the US. He believed that nearly every citizen in LA and in other major cities is allowed to and actually does carry concealed weapons, ready to blast away at any moment the random offensive eye contact is made. Typical commie Canuck.

A couple of long walks around downtown Ottawa would tell any aware American all he needs to know.[/QUOTE]I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at here. In general Canadian cities have had their own influx of third worlders in recent years, along with an uptick in crime, so the assumption its like walking around in a turn of the century Oslo certainly isn't valid, although most large U.S. cities you certainly wouldn't want to take very long walks anywhere.

weisbrot

2005-09-19 20:32 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Okiereddust]

I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at here. In general Canadian cities have had their own influx of third worlders in recent years, along with an uptick in crime, so the assumption its like walking around in a turn of the century Oslo certainly isn't valid, although most large U.S. cities you certainly wouldn't want to take very long walks anywhere.[/QUOTE]

Wasn't talking about Canadian cities in general; invalid assumptions are yours alone. I haven't been to Oslo, much less around the turn of any century. But I guess a comparison of Canadian cities to US cities could have some merit, even though I think there would be a most marked difference found specifically in Ottawa.

Haven't been to Vancouver lately, but I understand it's gone mostly Asian Asian in the more urban area especially. Quebec City is unlike any American city; so is Montreal. The Quebecois are friendlier, food is better, both cities are safer than almost any US city of comparable size.

Ottawa has little to no industry, has a highly educated populace, lots of white collar types. Many are the commie canucks you mentioned who work for the Canadian government. Too bad, I guess. Still, I haven't been to a US city of 1mm+ population in over a decade where I would feel completely at ease walking alone late at night. I'll take the Canuck government worker drones over the homeys crowded around the grates at an otherwise deserted Metro stop at midnight.

I'm not antiAmerican, and I don't want to loveitorleaveit. It's just that there is a missing element in Ottawa and some other Canadian cities that makes them- not perfect- but different, and somewhat preferable in many aspects.

Here's an exercise to figure out what's missing: Walk east of Jackson Square in the new-n-improved NOLA sometime soon, maybe go a few blocks after 9PM. Then, after your skull fracture heals and the stitches are out, take a walk at 1AM on a weekend night down Rue Sparks in Ottawa. It might take a while, but eventually you'll see what I'm talking about.

That element is what is making most of urban America unliveable. For everyone. Europeans and Canadians don't want to talk about it, and blame that "difference" on their gun control or drug laws or whatever. But it's simple really, and most Americans know the difference, and it seems to be totally unsolveable at this point.

Petr

2005-09-19 21:37 | User Profile

[COLOR=Red][FONT=Arial][COLOR=DarkRed][B][I] - "I cannot honestly understand how America of the 2005 vintage can be envied by Europeans."[/I][/B][/COLOR][/FONT][/COLOR]

Em, because in some places of America you are actually still allowed to carry firearms or maintain WN websites without being jailed for it?

(Eastern Europe is a somewhat different case, but Western Europe... even hyper-English David Irving resides in Key West these days.) [COLOR=DarkRed][SIZE=4][B] "One-third of Dutch people want to emigrate"[/B][/SIZE][/COLOR]

[url]http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=19065[/url]

Many people also simply do not like tightly-crowded areas and thus prefer the great spaces of North America: [SIZE=4][COLOR=Blue][FONT=Arial] [B]"Dutch Immigrants: Canada is Number One"[/B][/FONT][/COLOR] [/SIZE] [url]http://home.hetnet.nl/~h3483br5/cnst200-research.htm[/url]

Petr

Howling Privateer

2005-09-20 02:22 | User Profile

[QUOTE=xmetalhead]I cannot honestly understand how America of the 2005 vintage can be envied by Europeans.[/QUOTE] It's still a fantastic nation where incredible things can happen to whom deserves them (even if the fast White dispossession is actually the most incredible and undeserved thing).

Regarding the European anti-Americanism, really, the concern is not an everyday question here. Most people have favourable views on most aspects, and those who haven't keep good opinions on other issues. It's never a matter of mere Good and Evil.

xmetalhead

2005-09-20 13:24 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Petr]Em, because in some places of America you are actually still allowed to carry firearms or maintain WN websites without being jailed for it? [/QUOTE]

Sure, have all your guns you desire, but you'd be in a world of shit if you actually ever discharged one at someone, even an intruder. Bernard Goetz of 1984 NYC subway fame can tell you all about it.

[QUOTE=Howling Privateer]It's still a fantastic nation where incredible things can happen to whom deserves them (even if the fast White dispossession is actually the most incredible and undeserved thing).[/QUOTE]

Like I said in my post, "America of the 2005 vintage", which means it is nowhere near what it was 20-30-50-100 years ago. Money and greed rule the roost alone while the rest of us play "keeping up with the Jones'" as they say here. There's no culture here, except the vulgar pop culture of vanity, sex and money.

Okiereddust

2005-09-21 06:12 | User Profile

[QUOTE=weisbrot]Wasn't talking about Canadian cities in general; invalid assumptions are yours alone. I haven't been to Oslo, much less around the turn of any century. But I guess a comparison of Canadian cities to US cities could have some merit, even though I think there would be a most marked difference found specifically in Ottawa.

Haven't been to Vancouver lately, but I understand it's gone mostly Asian Asian in the more urban area especially. Quebec City is unlike any American city; so is Montreal. The Quebecois are friendlier, food is better, both cities are safer than almost any US city of comparable size.

Ottawa has little to no industry, has a highly educated populace, lots of white collar types. Many are the commie canucks you mentioned who work for the Canadian government. Too bad, I guess. Still, I haven't been to a US city of 1mm+ population in over a decade where I would feel completely at ease walking alone late at night. I'll take the Canuck government worker drones over the homeys crowded around the grates at an otherwise deserted Metro stop at midnight.

I'm not antiAmerican, and I don't want to loveitorleaveit. It's just that there is a missing element in Ottawa and some other Canadian cities that makes them- not perfect- but different, and somewhat preferable in many aspects........[/QUOTE]OK, I thought I knew in general what you're talking about, I just wanted to know the specifics.

Actually, believe it or not, crime rates in Canada overall are higher than in the U.S. I think its the nature of the crime and populace that makes the situation seem so different. American crime rates are lower, but they are in concentrated in areas - the core of our big cities, and in ways - violent crimes committed by extraordinarily impoverished and depraved blacks and hispanics - that make crime much more noticeable.

Let's face it - when people go touring, they don't go to visit Scarsdale or Skokie, or the San Fernando Valley (at least the San Fernando of old of "Valley girl" fame, not the Nouveau Tijuana). You visit the downtowns, which concentrate all the high visibility sights, but also concentrate all the undesirables.

That said, comparing cities like Canadian cities like Ottawa to American cities like New Orleans is pretty obviously skewed. Try comparing the downtown of cities like Toronto to the downtown of cities like Denver or Minneapolis. I suspect you'd prefer Denver or Minneapolis.

If you still perceive some differences, I'd think there's one more thing you should throw in. I think Canadians have made a conscious, and quite heavy-handed, effort to keep people in the downtown of cities through a number of policies, such as zoning regulations, along with other things (maybe just cultural experiences and preferences. In America of course we all abandoned the cities in the 60's for the suburbs and left it to all the social rifraff-minorities, gays, young yuppies, etc. So we do have plenty of nice surburbs where you can go to play golf, and make enough money that we can afford to commute there. (Unlike a lot of Canadians). Its just in many ways a more boring lifestyle than that we left behind, which I think is the real issue.