What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

This is a long read. But well worth it. Americans and non-Americans should all read this...

God Bless America..

I moved from the U.S. to Europe in 1998, and I鈥檝e been drawing comparisons ever since. Living in turn in the Netherlands, where kids come out of high school able to speak four languages, where gay marriage is a non-issue, and where book-buying levels are the world鈥檚 highest, and in Norway, where a staggering percentage of people read three newspapers a day and where respect for learning is reflected even in Oslo place names (鈥淧rofessor Aschehoug Square鈥? 鈥淧rofessor Birkeland Road鈥?, I was tempted at one point to write a book lamenting Americans鈥?anti-intellectualism鈥攖heir indifference to foreign languages, ignorance of history, indifference to academic achievement, susceptibility to vulgar religion and trash TV, and so forth. On point after point, I would argue, Europe had us beat.

Yet as my weeks in the Old World stretched into months and then years, my perceptions shifted. Yes, many Europeans were book lovers鈥攂ut which country鈥檚 literature most engaged them? Many of them revered education鈥攂ut to which country鈥檚 universities did they most wish to send their children? (Answer: the same country that performs the majority of the world鈥檚 scientific research and wins most of the Nobel Prizes.) Yes, American television was responsible for drivel like 鈥淭he Ricki Lake Show鈥濃€攂ut Europeans, I learned, watched this stuff just as eagerly as Americans did (only to turn around, of course, and mock it as a reflection of American boorishness). No, Europeans weren鈥檛 Bible-thumpers鈥攂ut the Continent鈥檚 ever-growing Muslim population, I had come to realize, represented even more of a threat to pluralist democracy than fundamentalist Christians did in the U.S. And yes, more Europeans were multilingual鈥攂ut then, if each of the fifty states had its own language, Americans would be multilingual, too.1 I鈥檇 marveled at Norwegians鈥?newspaper consumption; but what did they actually read in those newspapers?

That this was, in fact, a crucial question was brought home to me when a travel piece I wrote for the New York Times about a weekend in rural Telemark received front-page coverage in Aftenposten, Norway鈥檚 newspaper of record. Not that my article鈥檚 contents were remotely newsworthy; its sole news value lay in the fact that Norway had been mentioned in the New York Times. It was astonishing. And even more astonishing was what happened next: the owner of the farm hotel at which I鈥檇 stayed, irked that I鈥檇 made a point of his want of hospitality, got his revenge by telling reporters that I鈥檇 demanded McDonald鈥檚 hamburgers for dinner instead of that most Norwegian of delicacies, reindeer steak. Though this was a transparent fabrication (his establishment was located atop a remote mountain, far from the nearest golden arches), the press lapped it up. The story received prominent coverage all over Norway and dragged on for days. My inhospitable host became a folk hero; my irksome weekend trip was transformed into a morality play about the threat posed by vulgar, fast-food-eating American urbanites to cherished native folk traditions. I was flabbergasted. But my erstwhile host obviously wasn鈥檛: he knew his country; he knew its media; and he鈥檇 known, accordingly, that all he needed to do to spin events to his advantage was to breathe that talismanic word, McDonald鈥檚.

For me, this startling episode raised a few questions. Why had the Norwegian press given such prominent attention in the first place to a mere travel article? Why had it then been so eager to repeat a cartoonish lie? Were these actions reflective of a society more serious, more thoughtful, than the one I鈥檇 left? Or did they reveal a culture, or at least a media class, that was so awed by America as to be flattered by even its slightest attentions but that was also reflexively, irrationally belligerent toward it?

This experience was only part of a larger process of edification. Living in Europe, I gradually came to appreciate American virtues I鈥檇 always taken for granted, or even disdained鈥攁mong them a lack of self-seriousness, a grasp of irony and self-deprecating humor, a friendly informality with strangers, an unashamed curiosity, an openness to new experience, an innate optimism, a willingness to think for oneself and speak one鈥檚 mind and question the accepted way of doing things. (One reason why Euro- peans view Americans as ignorant is that when we don鈥檛 know something, we鈥檙e more likely to admit it freely and ask questions.) While Americans, I saw, cherished liberty, Europeans tended to take it for granted or dismiss it as a na茂ve or cynical, and somehow vaguely embarrassing, American fiction. I found myself toting up words that begin with i: individuality, imagination, initiative, inventiveness, independence of mind. Americans, it seemed to me, were more likely to think for themselves and trust their own judgments, and less easily cowed by authorities or bossed around by 鈥渆xperts鈥? they believed in their own ability to make things better. No wonder so many smart, ambitious young Europeans look for inspiration to the United States, which has a dynamism their own countries lack, and which communicates the idea that life can be an adventure and that there鈥檚 important, exciting work to be done. Reagan-style 鈥渕orning in America鈥?clich茅s may make some of us wince, but they reflect something genuine and valuable in the American air. Europeans may or may not have more of a 鈥渟ense of history鈥?than Americans do (in fact, in a recent study comparing students鈥?historical knowledge, the results were pretty much a draw), but America has something else that matters鈥攁 belief in the future.

Over time, then, these things came into focus for me. Then came September 11. Briefly, Western European hostility toward the U.S. yielded to sincere, if shallow, solidarity (鈥淲e are all Americans鈥?. But the enmity soon re-established itself (a fact confirmed for me daily on the websites of the many Western European newspapers I had begun reading online). With the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, it intensified. Yet the endlessly reiterated claim that George W. Bush 鈥渟quandered鈥?Western Europe鈥檚 post-9/11 sympathy is nonsense. The sympathy was a blip; the anti-Americanism is chronic. Why? In The Eagle鈥檚 Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World, American journalist and NPR commentator Mark Hertsgaard purports to seek an answer.2 His assumption throughout is that anti-Americanism is amply justified, for these reasons, among others:

Our foreign policy is often arrogant and cruel and threatens to 鈥渂low back鈥?against us in terrible ways. Our consumerist definition of prosperity is killing us, and perhaps the planet. Our democracy is an embarrassment to the word, a den of entrenched bureaucrats and legal bribery. Our media are a disgrace to the hallowed concept of freedom of the press. Our precious civil liberties are under siege, our economy is dividing us into rich and poor, our signature cultural activities are shopping and watching television. To top it off, our business and political elites are insisting that our model should also be the world鈥檚 model, through the glories of corporate-led globalization.

America, in short, is a mess鈥攁 cultural wasteland, an economic nightmare, a political abomination, an international misfit, outlaw, parasite, and pariah. If Americans don鈥檛 know this already, it is, in Hertsgaard鈥檚 view, precisely because they are Americans: 鈥淔oreigners,鈥?he proposes, 鈥渃an see things about America that natives cannot. . . . Americans can learn from their perceptions, if we choose to.鈥?What he fails to acknowledge, however, is that most foreigners never set foot in the United States, and that the things they think they know about it are consequently based not on first-hand experience but on school textbooks, books by people like Michael Moore, movies about spies and gangsters, 鈥淩icki Lake,鈥?鈥淐.S.I.,鈥?and, above all, the daily news reports in their own national media. What, one must therefore ask, are their media telling them? What aren鈥檛 they telling them? And what are the agendas of those doing the telling? Such questions, crucial to a study of the kind Hertsgaard pretends to be making, are never asked here. Citing a South African restaurateur鈥檚 assertion that non-Americans 鈥渉ave an advantage over [Americans], because we know everything about you and you know nothing about us,鈥?Hertsgaard tells us that this is a good point, but it鈥檚 not: non-Americans are always saying this to Americans, but when you poke around a bit, you almost invariably discover that what they 鈥渒now鈥?about America is very wide of the mark.

In any event, The Eagle鈥檚 Shadow proves to be something of a gyp: for though it鈥檚 packaged as a work of reportage about foreigners鈥?views of America, it鈥檚 really a jeremiad by Hertsgaard himself, punctuated occasionally, to be sure, by relevant quotations from cabbies, busdrivers, and, yes, a restaurateur whom he鈥檚 run across in his travels. His running theme is Americans鈥?parochialism: we 鈥渘ot only don鈥檛 know much about the rest of the world, we don鈥檛 care.鈥?I used to buy this line, too; then I moved to Europe and found that鈥攕urprise!鈥攑eople everywhere are parochial. Norwegians are no less fixated on Norway (pop. 4.5 million) than Americans are on America (pop. 280 million). And while Americans鈥?relative indifference to foreign news is certainly nothing to crow about, the provincial focus of Norwegian news reporting and public-affairs programming can feel downright claustrophobic. Hertsgaard illustrates Americans鈥?ignorance of world geography by telling us about a Spaniard who was asked at a wedding in Tennessee if Spain was in Mexico. I once told such stories as well (in fact, I began my professional writing career with a fretful op-ed about the lack of general knowledge that I, then a doctoral candidate in English, found among my undergraduate students); then I moved to Europe and met people like the sixtyish Norwegian author and psychologist who, at the annual dinner of a Norwegian authors鈥?society, told me she鈥檇 been to San Francisco but never to California.

One of Hertsgaard鈥檚 main interests鈥攚hich he shares with several other writers who have recently published books about America and the world鈥攊s the state of American journalism. His argument, in a nutshell, is that 鈥渇ew foreigners appreciate how poorly served Americans are by our media and educational systems鈥攈ow narrow the range of information and debate is in the land of the free.鈥?To support this claim, he offers up the fact that 鈥渋nternationally renowned intellectuals such as Edward W. Said and Frances Moore Lapp茅鈥?signed a statement against the invasion of Afghanistan, but were forced to run it as an ad because newspapers wouldn鈥檛 print it for free. Hertsgaard鈥檚 acid comment: 鈥淚n the United States, it seems, there are some things you have to buy the freedom to say.鈥?Now, I didn鈥檛 know who Lapp茅 was when I read this (it turns out she wrote a book called Diet for a Small Planet), but as for the late Professor Said, no writer on earth was given more opportunities by prominent newspapers and journals to air his views on the war against terror. In the two years between 9/11 and his death in 2003, his byline seemed ubiquitous.

Yes, there鈥檚 much about the American news media that deserves criticism, from the vulgar personality journalism of Larry King and Diane Sawyer to the cultural polarization nourished by the many publishers and TV news producers who prefer sensation to substance. But to suggest that American journalism, taken as a whole, offers a narrower range of information and debate than its foreign counterparts is absurd. America鈥檚 major political magazines range from National Review and The Weekly Standard on the right to The Nation and Mother Jones on the left; its all-news networks, from conservative Fox to liberal CNN; its leading newspapers, from the New York Post and Washington Times to the New York Times and Washington Post. Scores of TV programs and radio call-in shows are devoted to fiery polemic by, or vigorous exchanges between, true believers at both ends of the political spectrum. Nothing remotely approaching this breadth of news and opinion is available in a country like Norway. Purportedly to strengthen journalistic diversity (which, in the ludicrous words of a recent prime minister, 鈥渋s too important to be left up to the marketplace鈥?, Norway鈥檚 social-democratic government actually subsidizes several of the country鈥檚 major newspapers (in addition to running two of its three broadcast channels and most of its radio); yet the Norwegian media are (guess what?) almost uniformly social-democratic鈥攁 fact reflected not only in their explicit editorial positions but also in the slant and selectivity of their international coverage.3 Reading the opinion pieces in Norwegian newspapers, one has the distinct impression that the professors and bureaucrats who write most of them view it as their paramount function not to introduce or debate fresh ideas but to remind the masses what they鈥檙e supposed to think. The same is true of most of the journalists, who routinely spin the news from the perspective of social-democratic orthodoxy, systematically omitting or misrepresenting any challenge to that orthodoxy鈥攁nd almost invariably presenting the U.S. in a negative light. Most Norwegians are so accustomed to being presented with only one position on certain events and issues (such as the Iraq War) that they don鈥檛 even realize that there exists an intelligent alternative position.

Things are scarcely better in neighboring Sweden. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the only time I saw pro-war arguments fairly represented in the Scandinavian media was on an episode of 鈥淥prah鈥?that aired on Sweden鈥檚 TV4. Not surprisingly, a Swedish government agency later censured TV4 on the grounds that the program had violated media-balance guidelines. In reality, the show, which had featured participants from both sides of the issue, had plainly offended authorities by exposing Swedish viewers to something their nation鈥檚 media had otherwise shielded them from鈥攁 forceful articulation of the case for going into Iraq.4 In other European countries, to be sure, the media spectrum is broader than this; yet with the exception of Britain, no Western European nation even approaches America鈥檚 journalistic diversity. (The British courts鈥?recent silencing of royal rumors, moreover, reminded us that press freedom is distinctly more circumscribed in the U.K. than in the U.S.) And yet Western Europeans are regularly told by their media that it鈥檚 Americans who are fed slanted, selective news鈥攁 falsehood also given currency by Americans like Hertsgaard.

No less regrettable than Hertsgaard鈥檚 misinformation about the American media are his comments on American affluence, which he regards as an international embarrassment and a sign of moral deficiency. He waxes sarcastic about malls, about the range of products available to American consumers (whom he describes as 鈥渄ining on steak and ice cream twice a day鈥?, and about the fact that Americans 鈥渟pent $535 billion on entertainment in 1999, more than the combined GNPs of the world鈥檚 forty-five poorest nations.鈥?He appears not to have solicited the opinions of Eastern Europeans, a great many of whom, having been deprived under Communism of both civil rights and a decent standard of living, have a deep appreciation for both American liberty and American prosperity. But then Hertsgaard, predictably, touches on Communism only in the course of making anti-American points. For example, he recalls a man in Havana who, during the dispute over Florida鈥檚 electoral votes in the 2000 presidential contest, whimsically suggested that Cuba send over election observers. (Well, that would鈥檝e been one way to escape Cuba without being gunned down.) Hertsgaard further sneers that for many Americans, the fall of the Berlin Wall proved that they lived in 鈥渢he chosen nation of God.鈥?Now, for my part, I never heard anyone suggest such a connection. What I do remember about the Wall coming down is the lack of shame or contrition on the part of Western leftists who had spent decades appeasing and apologizing for Soviet Communism. In any event, does Hertsgaard really think that in a work purporting to evaluate America in an international context, this smirking comment about the Berlin Wall is all that need be said about the expiration of an empire that murdered tens of millions and from which the U.S., at extraordinary risk and expense, protected its allies for nearly half a century?

The victory over Soviet Communism is not the only honorable chapter of American history that Hertsgaard trashes. World War II? Though he grants that the U.S. saved Western Europe, he puts the word 鈥渟aving鈥?in scare quotes and maintains that 鈥淎merica had its own reasons鈥?(economic, naturally) for performing this service. September 11? Here, in its entirety, is what he has to say about that cataclysmic day: 鈥淪uddenly Americans had learned the hard way: what foreigners think does matter.鈥?The Iraq War? An atrocity against innocent civilians鈥攏othing more. There鈥檚 no reference here to Saddam鈥檚 torture cells, imprisoned children, or mass graves, no mention of the fact that millions of Iraqis who lived in terror are now free. Instead, Hertsgaard cites with approval a U.N. official鈥檚 smug comment that Americans, who never understand anything anyway, have failed to grasp 鈥渢hat Iraq is not made up of twenty-two million Saddam Husseins鈥?but of families and children. For a proper response to this remark, I need only quote from an address made to the Security Council by Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari on December 16, 2003. Accusing the U.N. of failing to save Iraq from 鈥渁 murderous tyranny,鈥?Zebari said: 鈥淭oday we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure. The United Nations must not fail the Iraqi people again.鈥?

Hertsgaard compares America unfavorably not only with Europe but鈥攊ncredibly鈥攚ith Africa. If 鈥渕any Europeans speak two if not three languages,鈥?he rhapsodizes, 鈥渋n Africa, multilingualism is even more common.鈥?So, one might add, are poverty, starvation, rape, AIDS infection, state tyranny and corruption, and such human-rights abominations as slavery, female genital mutilation, and the use of children as soldiers and prostitutes.

Hertsgaard contrasts America鈥檚 鈥渇renzied pace鈥?with the 鈥淎frican rhythms鈥?that he finds more congenial and notes with admiration that 鈥淎fricans live in social conditions that encourage inter- change, discourage hurry, and elevate the common good over that of the individual.鈥?In response to which it might be pointed out (a) that those 鈥渟ocial conditions鈥?generally go by the name of abject poverty and (b) that Hertsgaard fails to cite such recent examples of benign African 鈥渟ocial . . . interchange鈥?and expressions of concern for the 鈥渃ommon good鈥?as Mugabe鈥檚 terror regime in Zimbabwe, ethnic clashes in the Central African Republic, Somali anarchy, Rwandan genocide (800,000 dead), prolonged civil wars in Sudan (two million dead), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1.7 million dead), Liberia (200,000 dead), the Ivory Coast, and elsewhere, not to mention massacres of Christians by Muslims in Sudan and Nigeria. To recommend Africa to Americans as a model of social harmony without a hint of qualification is not just unserious, it鈥檚 hallucinatory.6

Every nation requires serious, responsible criticism, particularly if it鈥檚 the planet鈥檚 leading economic power, the arsenal of democracy, and the center of humanity鈥檚 common culture. But Hertsgaard鈥檚 criticism of America is neither serious nor responsible. Though at one point (apropos of American medicine and science) he concedes, with breathtaking dismissiveness, that 鈥淲e Americans are a clever bunch,鈥?he usually talks about his fellow countrymen as if they鈥檙e buffoons who have mysteriously and unjustly lucked into living in the world鈥檚 richest country, while most of the rest of the species, though far brighter and more deserving, somehow ended up in grinding poverty. For him, Americans鈥?intellectual mediocrity would seem to be a self-evident truth, but his own observations hardly exemplify the kind of reflectiveness a reader of such a book has a right to expect. For example, when he notes with satisfaction that the young Sigmund Freud 鈥渃omplained . . . incessantly about [America鈥檚] lack of taste and culture,鈥?Hertsgaard seems not to have realized that Freud was, of course, comparing the U.S. to his native Austria, which would later demonstrate its 鈥渢aste and culture鈥?by welcoming the Nazi Anschluss. One ventures to suggest that had Freud鈥攚ho escaped the Gestapo thanks to intervention by Franklin D. Roosevelt鈥攕urvived to see the liberated death camps in which his four sisters perished, he might well have revised his views about the relative virtues of American and Austrian culture.

II

Hertsgaard鈥檚 conviction that 鈥渇oreigners can see things that Americans cannot鈥?is echoed on the dust jacket of A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World.7 鈥淪ometimes,鈥?blurbs Robert Reich, Clinton鈥檚 Secretary of Labor, 鈥渋t takes a non-American to hold a mirror to America and enable us to see what we鈥檝e become.鈥?The non-American here is the British columnist Will Hutton, formerly editor of the Observer. Though Hutton shares Hertsgaard鈥檚 tendency to find just about every aspect of American life repellent鈥攁nd shares, too, Hertsgaard鈥檚 unoriginality (in the U.S., he quips witlessly, 鈥渨orship at church is rivaled only by worship of the shopping mall鈥?鈥擧utton insists he loves America. (As proof, he lists his pop-culture preferences: 鈥淚 enjoy Sheryl Crow and Clint Eastwood alike, delight in Woody Allen. . . .鈥? Indeed, he claims it鈥檚 his 鈥渁ffection for the best of America that makes me so angry that it has fallen so far from the standards it expects of itself.鈥?Yet it soon becomes clear that for Hutton, the problem is not that America has abandoned its founding ideals; the problem is the founding ideals themselves.

The essence of Hutton鈥檚 argument is that 鈥渁ll Western democracies subscribe to a broad family of ideas that are liberal or leftist鈥?(note the sly conflation here of 鈥渓iberal鈥?and 鈥渓eftist,鈥?which in Europe, of course, are opposites), and that first among these ideas is 鈥渁 belief in the primacy of society鈥?as opposed to the insidious 鈥淎merican belief in the primacy of the individual.鈥?Hutton traces the prioritization of society over the individual back to medieval feudalism, which he holds up鈥攈ilariously鈥攁s an ideal. The trouble, he explains, started when Puritan individualists 鈥渨ho passionately believed that they could individually establish a direct relationship with God鈥?emigrated to North America and invented 鈥渁n explosively new and radical ideology鈥?that justified 鈥渁n individualist rather than a social view of property.鈥?This led to the American Revolution, which Hutton compares unfavorably with its French counterpart of 1789, since the former put the individual first (bad) while the latter introduced a 鈥渘ew social contract鈥?(good). 鈥淭he European tradition,鈥?he instructs us, 鈥渋s much more mindful that men and women are social animals and that individual liberty is only one of a spectrum of values that generate a good society.鈥?Well, he鈥檚 right: Europe has been more drawn than America to communitarianism than to individual rights鈥攁nd it鈥檚 precisely this tragic susceptibility that made possible the rise of Fascism, Nazism, and Communism and that obliged the U.S. to step in and save the Continent from itself in World War II. Nonetheless, Hutton has the audacity to insist that 鈥渋t would all be so much better if the United States rejoined the world on new terms鈥濃€攊f, in other words, Americans exchanged Jeffersonian values for the currently popular European 鈥渋sm,鈥?statism.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Hutton is a true statist, the sort of person who feels less than fully comfortable in societies where the government fails to make its presence sufficiently felt: 鈥淚n a world that is wholly private,鈥?he writes, 鈥渨e lose our bearings; deprived of any public anchor, all we have are our individual subjective values to guide us.鈥?Part and parcel of this philosophy (which might well be straight out of Mao鈥檚 Little Red Book) is an enthusiasm for, as he puts it rather clunkily, 鈥減ublicly owned TV stations with a mandate to provide a universal public service as guarantors that ordinary citizens will have access to core news and comment delivered as objectively as possible.鈥?In other words, the way to ensure objective reporting is to put the government in charge! Hutton is dismayed that the U.S. spends too little money on public TV and that 鈥渙nly 2.2 percent of viewers鈥?watch it; by contrast, he鈥檚 delighted with 鈥淓uropean governments and the EU,鈥?because they鈥檙e 鈥渁ggressive in their regulation of broadcasting content鈥?and ban, for example, 鈥渞acist expression.鈥?He favors, in short, allowing government bureaucrats to decide what is and isn鈥檛 racist (or, for that matter, sexist or homophobic) and to punish transgressors. It鈥檚 breathtaking to see a writer so eager to quash freedom of speech. 鈥淲hile American broadcasters,鈥?he notes, 鈥減lead the First Amendment鈥檚 commitment to absolute free speech, making public interest regulation almost impossible鈥濃€攖he knaves!鈥斺€淓urope acts to ensure that television and radio conform to public interest criteria.鈥?Public interest criteria: Hutton seems enamored of this sinister phrase. Though he admits that a penchant for such regulation once made Nazism 鈥渁ttractive鈥?to 鈥渕any Europeans,鈥?Hutton is bizarrely confident that Europeans have put behind them their taste for tyranny. Yet his blithe rejection of free speech is a formula for tyranny.

At this writing, America鈥檚 nonfiction bestseller lists consist largely of boorish polemics from both left and right; The Eagle鈥檚 Shadow and A Declaration of Interdependence are meant to be a higher class of book. But Hertsgaard鈥檚 effort to convince Americans that they live in an entirely different country than the one they know, and Hutton鈥檚 attempt to talk Americans out of their commitment to individual freedom, are, in their own ways, as crude and coarse as anything by Michael Moore or Ann Coulter.

Like Will Hutton, Clyde Prestowitz, a former Foreign Service Officer and international businessman, begins his critique of America by telling us that his reproaches spring from affection, not antagonism, and that, although his book is entitled Rogue Nation, he 鈥渋n no way mean[s] to equate the United States with Saddam Hussein鈥檚 Iraq or any other brutal, dictatorial regime.鈥? Why the title, then? Because for this ex-diplomat author, it would seem, a 鈥渞ogue nation鈥?is not necessarily one whose rulers butcher their subjects by the thousands but one whose leaders refuse to play the diplomatic game of pretending that their counterparts in countries like Saddam鈥檚 Iraq are something other than butchers. To be sure, Prestowitz has some good things to say about the U.S. (he points out, for instance, that Americans give twice as much to charity as Europeans, a fact that would shock most Europeans), and many of his criticisms (e.g., of American health insurance, oil dependency, and failure to respond more usefully to the fall of the Soviet Union) are thoroughly consistent with a belief that America is, on balance, a force for democracy and justice in the world. But for the most part Prestowitz comes off as agreeing with Hertsgaard and Hutton that America is an outlaw state whose cultural values and political system are fundamentally flawed and whose interactions with the outside world do more harm than good. With Prestowitz, it sometimes seems, America just can鈥檛 win: he blames it for interfering abroad and for not interfering; for giving too much money to other countries and for giving too little; for exercising too much control over the world economy and for exercising too little; for protecting U.S. jobs through tariffs and farm subsidies and for not protecting them. By contrast, he adores the EU; several of his blurbs are from top EU bureaucrats.

Indeed, I can鈥檛 recall when I last saw a book with so many celebrity endorsements (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Wesley Clark, David Gergen, etc.) on the dust jacket; and as if this weren鈥檛 enough, Prestowitz keeps reminding us of his high-powered connections throughout the book: 鈥淕eorge Soros recently told me . . .鈥? 鈥淎s Brazil鈥檚 ambassador to Washington . . . said to me . . .鈥? 鈥淎s the former WTO chief . . . told me. . . .鈥?The purpose of all this name-dropping, obviously, is to underscore his experience and authority; but one result of it is to paint a picture of a man whose social circle consists almost exclusively of ambassadors, finance ministers, and the like. Needless to say, experience counts; but to spend too much time hobnobbing with the affable subordinates of tyrants is to risk caring too much about the atmosphere at embassy soir茅es and too little about the quality of life of the people living under those tyrants鈥?heels. Indeed, Prestowitz, while paying occasional lip service to the notion that democracy matters and that some countries truly are oppressive dictatorships, tends to sympathize with his diplomatic colleagues from oppressive dictatorships who resent the U.S. for acting as if they are, well, oppressive dictatorships. He recalls, for instance, a dinner at which ambassadors from Egypt, Singapore, Nigeria, and other nations griped bitterly about America鈥檚 demand that its citizens be exempted from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Instead of pointing out that these underlings of autocrats have a lot of nerve expecting the U.S. to subject its citizens to a court run by the likes of them, he shares their irritation at the U.S. for not playing ball.

Prestowitz (who is a Christian) is particularly uncritical of Arab and Muslim regimes. One of his blurbs is actually from former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who praises his 鈥渋nsightful analysis of how America is disappointing the world by failing to fulfill its own values.鈥?This from a brutal despot who committed human-rights abuses, imprisoned his critics, and made headlines in 2003 with an ugly anti-Semitic speech! Prestowitz gives Saudi Arabia the kid-gloves treatment: ignoring ample evidence of Saudi complicity in acts of terrorism, he insists that the Saudis are our friends and that ordinary Saudis only began to turn against America when Americans, after 9/11, began turning against them. He reports a conversation with a friend of his, the 鈥渙wner of a leading Saudi newspaper chain,鈥?who said that his son, formerly a student at 鈥渁 top U.S. preparatory school鈥?and 鈥渁 leading U.S. university,鈥?was now attending 鈥渕eetings of radical political and religious figures鈥?and had become 鈥渘ot only strongly anti-American but also anti-Israeli.鈥?Why? According to Prestowitz, the reason was 鈥渢he sudden reversal of American attitudes鈥?toward Saudi Arabia, as exemplified by post-9/11 media attention to that country鈥檚 鈥淚slamic law, its veiling of women, its charitable giving institutions, its school system, its lack of democracy, and its support of the Palestinians.鈥? Let鈥檚 get this straight: Prestowitz is arguing here that if Saudi Arabians, whose state-controlled newspapers (including, presumably, those owned by his friend) routinely churn out anti-American and anti-Semitic lies, have turned against America, it鈥檚 because the independent American press has begun telling the truth about Saudi Arabia. And where is Prestowitz鈥檚 sympathy in this case? Quite clearly, with Saudi Arabia鈥攁 country where there鈥檚 no freedom of religion or expression and where sons may be sent to foreign universities but daughters are not even allowed to drive.10

Representative of Prestowitz鈥檚 treatment of Israel, meanwhile, is the following comment: 鈥淭he U.S media are so sensitive to Israeli criticism of their coverage that CNN, in a historic first, actually apologized in response to complaints that its reporting of Israeli-Palestinian battles in the town of Jenin was too favorable to the Palestinians.鈥?The truth behind this statement is that CNN, like other news organizations around the world, repeatedly reported as factual the Palestinian claim that the Israelis had carried out a massacre in Jenin; after it was established that there had in fact been no massacre, CNN admitted its mistake. (Many other news organizations continue to echo this calumny.) For Prestowitz to represent the Jenin episode in the way that he does鈥攁nd to ignore the strong anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian slant of most European news organizations鈥攕eems deliberately misleading. As with Hertsgaard and Hutton, his eagerness to assail America, a democratic nation, on so many counts while defending and/or sugarcoating authoritarian regimes around the world is disgraceful.

III

It鈥檚 a relief to turn from these writers to young Jedediah Purdy, who in Being America actually presents a recognizable picture of America and the world, conveys a genuine respect for American democracy, and refuses to sentimentalize countries that are rife with beggary and corruption.11 Like Hertsgaard, Purdy begins by asking why foreigners feel as they do about America; unlike Hertsgaard, he makes a serious attempt to answer the question. Traveling the Third World, he interviews religious and business leaders, activists and journalists, ambitious young would-be capitalists, and teenagers hanging out at malls. His conclusion? Quite simply, that the spread of democratic capitalism is essentially positive, though hardly problem-free; that young Third Worlders鈥?self-contradictions on the subject of America (cheering Osama one minute and Microsoft the next) reflects a simultaneous attraction to both American liberalism and anti-American violence; and that it鈥檚 in America鈥檚 interest to encourage the liberalism and discourage the violence.

Well, fine. But how? Purdy鈥檚 advice: America should approach the world with greater modesty, for 鈥渨hat we do well will speak for itself. It is better not to speak too loudly of one鈥檚 own principles.鈥?Is it? Surely one of the major problems in intercultural contexts is that actions often don鈥檛 speak for themselves, and that if principles aren鈥檛 clearly spelled out, motives may be tragically misinterpreted. If Westerners, as Purdy affirms, need to understand better the way people in other cultures think, surely the Muslim world, by the same token, needs an intensive course in the concepts of pluralist democracy and equal rights. Purdy might also do well to recall that modesty in men is often viewed by Islamic cultures not as a virtue but as a contemptible sign of weakness. Every time one of Purdy鈥檚 young interlocutors expresses admiration for Osama bin Laden, Purdy tolerantly lets it slide; does he really think that by being passive in the face of such provocations he is increasing his interviewees鈥?respect for him, for America, or for democracy?

But while Purdy may not have a reasonable solution to anti-Americanism, he鈥檚 far better than Hertsgaard at explaining why it exists. We鈥檝e seen Hertsgaard approvingly cite an Egyptian鈥檚 complaint about the unruliness of American children; Purdy, too, quotes an Egyptian鈥攁 Christian, as it happens鈥攚ho explains, with refreshing honesty, that his own reason for hating America is that it welcomes Muslim immigrants and tolerates homosexuality. Purdy is to be congratulated for not sweeping such attitudes under the rug. (How many such remarks has Hertsgaard heard and chosen not to repeat?) Plainly, Purdy has no delusion that the foundations of anti-Americanism are noble; and he finds it ridiculous to speak of an 鈥渋mperial America.鈥?Yet he can still see why even highly Americanized foreigners refer to the U.S. as an empire. Why? Because as they struggle to learn and speak English and to find a comfortable meeting place between America鈥檚 culture and their own, these foreigners are acutely aware that Americans don鈥檛 have to make a comparable effort.

English is our language; American culture, our culture. It is our exemption from this otherwise global burden of adaptation, Purdy suggests, that makes us seem 鈥渋mperial.鈥?He鈥檚 right; indeed, an intense consciousness of the imbalance he describes, and the resentment it fosters among non-Americans, is an ever-present factor in the life of any remotely observant American expatriate. 鈥淲hile there is no need,鈥?Purdy adds, 鈥渢o admire or accept鈥?the notion of American empire, 鈥渢here is no escaping the need to understand it,鈥?for 鈥渢he idea of American empire is a part of the world鈥檚 imaginary landscape.鈥?Purdy has a sense of proportion that Hertsgaard, Hutton, and Prestowitz lack; when discussing America and the world, his allotment of criticism and praise feels just about right. May his tribe increase.

The fact that Richard Crockatt is an academic (he teaches American history at the University of East Anglia) comes through clearly on every page of America Embattled: September 11, Anti-Americanism and the Global Order.12 In a plodding, prudent, professorial prose, Crockatt first sums up 鈥渉ow America sees the world鈥?and 鈥渉ow the world sees America,鈥?then offers a potted history of political Islam, of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, and of the war on terror, all the while patently seeking to strike an inoffensive balance, as if such a thing were possible with such a topic. Crockatt鈥檚 book has a cultivated colorlessness: he seems incapable of making the blandest assertion without qualifying it to death or using the word 鈥渁rguably鈥?(which recurs here with the frequency of expletives in a rap lyric). Whether the issue is globalization or the role of Israel, Crockatt painstakingly outlines the arguments for almost every imaginable position, only to move on, once that鈥檚 done, to the next issue, leaving the reader baffled as to where the author himself stands. To be sure, we鈥檙e given hints now and then: Crockatt seems more favorably inclined toward the U.N., NGOs, and the BBC than toward NATO, the IMF, or CNN; he tiptoes gingerly around the issue of European and Muslim anti-Semitism; he pays more attention to the purported U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at Guant谩namo than to all of Saddam鈥檚 atrocities; and he is capable of stating, absurdly, that Le Monde cannot 鈥渂e regarded as . . . anti-American.鈥?But for the most part his book is a tame, toothless summary, a tissue of self-evident points (鈥淎n understanding of Islam must surely play a part in explaining the events of September 11鈥? that ends in conclusions whose obviousness (鈥淪eptember 11 brought terrorism to the forefront of the global agenda鈥? defies parody.

Dinesh D鈥橲ouza seeks not to encourage or explain anti-Americanism but to counter it by answering the question posed in his book鈥檚 title: What鈥檚 So Great about America?13 D鈥橲ouza, a former Reagan aide and longtime fixture at right-wing think tanks, reminds us that many of the Third World societies that leftists such as Hertsgaard and Hutton affect to admire are (hello!) fiercely reactionary. Indeed, D鈥橲ouza makes it clear that his own conservative moral perspective owes much to the traditional cultural values of his native India. 鈥淭he critics of America,鈥?he asserts鈥攔eferring not to European socialists but to reactionary Muslims鈥攁re 鈥渙nto something.鈥?Their critique, he says, is moral in character, and D鈥橲ouza (a Catholic) gives little indication of disagreeing with their moral criteria, including their equation of morality with religious orthodoxy. 鈥淭he West,鈥?he proposes, 鈥渋s a society based on freedom whereas Islam is a society based on virtue.鈥?How about: Islamic societies enforce stifling Koranic notions of virtue, and punish infractions with brutal Sharia justice, while democratic societies do not presume to dictate individual moral convictions? D鈥橲ouza shares the Islamic view that 鈥渢here is a good deal in American culture that is disgusting to normal sensibilities.鈥?(He never tells us what he means by 鈥渘ormal鈥濃€攁nd one is not sure one wishes to know.) Muslims, he notes, 鈥渟ay our women are 鈥榣oose,鈥?and in a sense they are right.鈥?(Yes, if by 鈥渓oose鈥?you mean that they have the same sexual freedom as men; it鈥檚 called 鈥渆qual rights.鈥? The father of a young daughter, D鈥橲ouza says he has 鈥渃ome to realize how much more difficult it is to raise her well in America than it would be . . . to raise her in India.鈥?(Yes, if by 鈥渞aise her well鈥?you mean鈥攐h, never mind. You get the idea.)

Despite America鈥檚 lack of virtue, however鈥攁ll the 鈥渃rime, drugs, divorce, abortion, illegitimacy, and pornography鈥?(given his track record, the omission of homosexuality from this list is surprising)鈥擠鈥橲ouza chooses the U.S. over India. Why? Because 鈥淚 know that my daughter will have a better life if I stay. I don鈥檛 mean just that she will be better off; I mean that her life is likely to have greater depth, meaning, and fulfillment in the United States than it would in any other country.鈥?For he鈥檚 come to see that there鈥檚 鈥渟omething great and noble about America鈥? namely, the fact that in the U.S., you鈥檙e 鈥渢he architect of your own destiny.鈥?He tries, not with undivided success, to distinguish between the founding American principle of self-determination (good) and the narcissistic do-your-own-thing mentality of the 1960s (not so good). As an example of the former, he movingly describes how his talk of feeling 鈥渃alled to be a writer鈥?and of wanting 鈥渁 life that made me feel true to myself鈥?baffled his Indian father; as an example of the latter, he unfeelingly mocks a young man with 鈥渁 Mohawk, earrings, a nose ring, tattoos鈥?who waited on him at a Starbucks and whom D鈥橲ouza dismisses as 鈥渁 specimen.鈥?Not a pretty performance.

In Of Paradise and Power, Robert Kagan, who like Prestowitz worked for the State Department during the Reagan administration, serves up a dispassionate, definitive account of the current transatlantic strategic relationship. The book reminds us of some plain, but often obscured, facts.14 For one thing, America鈥檚 Cold War strategy of risking nuclear attack to protect Western Europe was 鈥渆xtraordinary鈥濃€攁 鈥渉istorically unprecedented example鈥?of 鈥渢he most enlightened kind of self-interest.鈥?For another, European history is not a cozy chronicle of congenial community, as Hutton and others would have it, but a long, grim tale of corrupt, power-mad kings and pointless, protracted, bloodthirsty wars. Europeans, Kagan points out, 鈥渋nvented power politics鈥? by contrast, 鈥淎mericans have never accepted the principles of Europe鈥檚 old order nor embraced the Machiavellian perspective.鈥?Far from evolving naturally out of the community-minded premodern Europe of Hutton鈥檚 (and others鈥? fantasy, moreover, the EU was the product of 鈥渁n act of will鈥?by 鈥渂orn-again idealists鈥?set on 鈥渢he integration and taming鈥?of Germany. And why have these Machiavellians become idealists? Because they no longer have power 鈥攁nd, being powerless, they resent U.S. power, even when it鈥檚 used not to conquer but to help.

Which brings us to the thesis of this compact, meticulously argued work: that the 鈥減aradise鈥?of peace and prosperity Europe now enjoys is made possible, quite simply, by American power. Provided with 鈥渟ecurity from outside,鈥?Europe requires no power of its own; yet protected 鈥渦nder the umbrella of American power,鈥?it鈥檚 able to delude itself that power is 鈥渘o longer important鈥?and 鈥渢hat American military power, and the 鈥榮trategic culture鈥?that has created and sustained it, is outmoded and dangerous.鈥?European leaders, says Kagan, see themselves as inhabiting a post-historical world in which war has been rendered obsolete by the triumph of international 鈥渕oral consciousness鈥? yet most of them do not see or do not wish to see the great paradox: that their passage into post-history has depended on the United States not making the same passage. Because Europe has neither the will nor the ability to guard its own paradise and keep it from being overrun, spiritually and well as physically, by a world that has yet to accept the rule of 鈥渕oral consciousness,鈥?it has become dependent on America鈥檚 willingness to use its military might to deter or defeat those around the world who still believe in power politics.

In short, though the U.S. makes Europe鈥檚 鈥減aradise鈥?possible, 鈥渋t cannot enter the paradise itself. It mans the walls but cannot walk through the gate . . . stuck in history, [it is] left to deal with the Saddams and the ayatollahs, the Kim Jong Ils and the Jiang Zemins, leaving most of the benefits to others.鈥?And when it does address those threats, furthermore, it feels Europe鈥檚 wrath, for 鈥淎merica鈥檚 power and its willingness to exercise that power鈥攗nilaterally if necessary鈥攃onstitute a threat to Europe鈥檚 new sense of mission.鈥?If Europe鈥檚 intellectual and political elite was briefly pro-America after 9/11, it was because America was suddenly a victim, and European intellectuals are accustomed to sympathizing reflexively with victims (or, more specifically, with perceived or self-proclaimed victims, such as Arafat). That support began to wane the moment it became clear that Americans had no intention of being victims.

Of Paradise and Power (which the popular media have summed up by quoting Kagan鈥檚 memorable statement that 鈥淎mericans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus鈥? has drawn both praise and condemnation. In this reader鈥檚 opinion, it鈥檚 simply a straightforward, incontrovertible description of reality by an author whose eyes are wide open. To be sure, the Europe/America opposition appears at this writing to be somewhat less black and white than Kagan, writing prior to the invasion of Iraq, may have recognized. An attack on Iraq, he says, would be 鈥渁n assault on the essence of 鈥榩ostmodern鈥?Europe . . . an assault on Europe鈥檚 new ideals, a denial of their universal validity.鈥?Yet much of Europe, as we know, ended up endorsing that assault. In January 2003, leaders of Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and the Czech Republic urged Europe to join the U.S. in opposing Saddam; in February, ten Eastern European nations issued a similar statement; in March, British, Danish, Spanish, and Polish troops took part in the invasion alongside Americans and Australians. There is, then, considerable resistance on the Continent鈥攅specially in former Iron Curtain coun- tries鈥攖o 鈥減ostmodern Europe,鈥?a concept intimately tied up, one might add, with French and German ambitions.

If America is founded on liberty鈥攁nd on the idea that its preservation is worth great sacrifice鈥攖hose who steer the fortunes of Western Europe have no strong unifying principle for which they can imagine sacrificing much. Their common cause is not liberty but security and stability; the closest thing they have to a unifying principle is a self-delusionary, dogmatic, indeed well-nigh religious insistence on the absolute value of dialogue, discussion, and diplomacy. This dedication has its positive aspects, but it can also make for moral confusion, passivity, and an antagonism to the very idea of taking a firm stand on anything.15 If, in the view of many Americans, a love of freedom and hatred of tyranny provide all the legitimacy required for taking actions like the invasion of Iraq, European intellectuals, having no such deeply held principles to guide them, turn instinctively to the U.N., as if it existed, like some divine oracle, at an ideal, impersonal remove from any possibility of misjudgment or moral taint.

IV

It is not only in the U.S. and Britain that the bookstores have lately been filled with books harshly critical of America鈥攁nd that responses to these works have begun to appear. France has seen a spate of volumes with titles like Dangereuse Am茅rique and Apr猫s l鈥檈mpire: Essai sur la d茅composition du syst猫me am茅ricain; Thierry Meyssan鈥檚 L鈥檈ffroyable imposture, which argues that no plane struck the Pentagon on 9/11, was a bestseller. So, however, was Jean-Fran莽ois Revel鈥檚 L鈥檕bsession anti-am茅ricaine, which has now appeared in the U.S. as Anti-Americanism.16 Revel鈥檚 earliest opinions of America, he tells us, were formed by 鈥渢he European press, which means that my judgment was unfavorable鈥? yet those opinions changed when he actually visited America during the Vietnam War. Decades later, he notes wryly, the European media still employ the same misrepresentations as they did back then, depicting an America plagued by severe poverty, extreme inequality, 鈥渘o unemployment benefits, no retirement, no assistance for the destitute,鈥?and medical care and university education only for the rich. 鈥淓uropeans firmly believe this caricature,鈥?Revel writes, 鈥渂ecause it is repeated every day by the elites.鈥?The centrality of this point to the entire topic of European anti-Americanism cannot, in my view, be overstated.

Item by item, Revel refutes the European media鈥檚 picture of America. Poverty? An American at the poverty level has about the same standard of living as the average citizen of Greece or Portugal. (Indeed, according to a recent study by the Swedish Trade Research Institute, Swedes have a slightly lower standard of living than black Americans鈥攁 devastating statistic for Scandinavians, for whom both the unparalleled success of their own welfare economies and the pitiable poverty of blacks in the racist U.S. are articles of faith.) Crime? America has grown safer, while the French ignore their own rising crime levels, a consequence of 鈥減ermanent street warfare鈥?by Muslim immigrants 鈥渨ho don鈥檛 consider themselves subject to the laws of the land鈥?and of authorities with 鈥渁nti-law-and-order ideologies.鈥?Revel contrasts France鈥檚 increasingly problematic division into ethnic Frenchmen and unassimilated immigrants with 鈥淎merica鈥檚 truly diverse, multifaceted society,鈥?pointing out that 鈥渢he success and originality of American integration stems precisely from the fact that immigrants鈥?descendants can perpetuate their ancestral cultures while thinking of themselves as American citizens in the fullest sense.鈥?Bingo. (Most Americans, I think, would be shocked to realize how far short of America Europe falls in this regard.)

Media? Revel recalls that when he first visited the U.S., he 鈥渨as struck by the vast gulf that separated our [French] state-controlled television news services鈥攕tilted, long-winded and monot- onous, dedicated to presenting the official version of events鈥攆rom the lively, aggressive evening news shows on NBC or CBS, crammed with eye-opening images and reportage that offered unflinching views of social and political realities at home and American involvement abroad.鈥?(Take that, Mr. Hutton.) He also observed a difference in the populace: 鈥渨hereas in France people鈥檚 opinions were fairly predictable and tended to follow along lines laid down by their social role, what I heard in America was much more varied鈥攁nd frequently unexpected. I realized that many more Americans than Europeans had formed their own opinions about matters鈥攚hether intelligent or idiotic is another question鈥攔ather than just parroting the received wisdom of their social milieu.鈥?True: by Western European standards, I鈥檝e come to realize, Americans are very independent thinkers.

To Revel, the tenacity of European anti-Americanism, despite historical developments that should have finished it off once and for all, suggests 鈥渢hat we are in the presence, not of rational analysis, but of obsession鈥濃€攁n obsession driven, he adds, by a desire to maintain public hostility to Jeffersonian democracy. The European establishment, Revel notes, soft-pedals the fact that Europeans 鈥渋nvented the great criminal ideologies of the twentieth century鈥? it defangs Communism (at 鈥渢he top French business school,鈥?students think Stalin鈥檚 great error was to 鈥減rioritize capital goods over . . . consumer goods鈥?; and it identifies the U.S., 鈥渃ontrary to every lesson of real history . . . as the singular threat to democracy.鈥?Revel鈥檚 vigorous assault on all this foolishness might easily have been dismissed in France (or denied publication altogether) but for the fact that he鈥檚 a member of that revered symbol of French national culture, the Acad茅mie Fran莽aise.

Two books, though at present available only in Norwegian, are worth mentioning here for the light they shed on Western European attitudes. Herman Willis鈥?Ich Bin Ein Amerikaner caught my eye at an Oslo bookstore with its cover picture of the Twin Towers ablaze.17 鈥淚s there anyone,鈥?asked the jacket copy, 鈥渨ho thinks solidarity [with the U.S.] should wait until the first suicide bomber blows herself up here [in Norway]?鈥?It looked promising. Yet the book Willis has written isn鈥檛 a brief for solidarity with America but a brisk, rambling, opinionated, and rather familiar account of the author鈥檚 recent travels in the U.S. Its tone鈥攁 mixture of chummy irreverence and defensive condescension鈥攊s familiar from other European travel books about America, as are its ingredients: Willis eats barbecue, extends unsolicited sympathy to American blacks, enthuses over Elvis, expresses his disapproval of the My Lai massacre; he seeks out the company of rednecks and left-wing intellectuals, which allows him to depict an America torn between racist boneheads and people who think like, well, members of the Scandinavian establishment; and he labors (in precisely the fashion described by Revel in his critique of the French media) to leave the impression that the U.S. has no public schools, pensions, unemployment insurance, or media debate. Willis鈥?anecdotes range from the funny (he tells us that young Norwegian lawbreakers, who thanks to American TV shows are more familiar with the U.S. justice system than their own, routinely ask their arresting officers: 鈥淎ren鈥檛 you going to read me my rights?鈥? to the disturbing (Willis informs us, and doesn鈥檛 seem to find it particularly worrisome, that his 鈥淎rab friends鈥?in Oslo consider 9/11 a Jewish conspiracy).

The closest Willis comes to a thesis is a not altogether tidy theory that he concocts after hearing an American refer to soldiers dying for 鈥渙thers鈥?freedom.鈥?Like many Europeans, Willis doesn鈥檛 get this 鈥渧ery American鈥?thing about fighting and dying for freedom, and he figures that behind all the talk of freedom there must be some other, more comprehensible motive or value. Pondering the insights of a friend who defends the French Empire as an admirable 鈥渁ttempt to spread French civilization and culture鈥?but who condemns American wars as being 鈥渙nly about money,鈥?Willis decides that this business about 鈥渇reedom鈥?must, indeed, have something to do with money鈥攕pecifically, with the American drive to succeed. But at this point Willis introduces a twist: deep down, he says鈥攁nd he plainly thinks this is a major insight鈥擜mericans aren鈥檛 preoccupied with success but with failure. Why, after all, do Europeans erect monuments to military victories, while Americans build memorials to their war dead and require children to memorize the Gettysburg Address? Because, Willis says, Americans 鈥渨orship defeat.鈥?Case closed. Likewise, if 鈥渢he U.S. has never developed totalitarian ideologies,鈥?it鈥檚 not because Americans love freedom but, rather, has something (it鈥檚 not clear exactly what) to do with our 鈥渄ynamic of success.鈥?

What does it mean when even a relatively America-friendly European writer is capable of such colossal misunderstanding? For make no mistake: as European writers and intellectuals go, Willis is indeed at the pro-American end of the spectrum. He argues, for example, that the U.S. isn鈥檛 necessarily 鈥渃orrupt and/or fanatical鈥?just because it rejects the Scandinavian welfare model (gee, thanks, Herman!). In his closing pages, moreover, he contradicts much of what he鈥檚 said earlier by declaring that the U.S. and Europe are, in fact, extremely similar, since they share many things, including 鈥渢he threat of terror鈥?(which he鈥檚 hardly mentioned). The main difference between the U.S. and Europe, he argues, is that America 鈥渋s miles ahead of us in tolerance and equality.鈥?He鈥檚 right鈥攂ut this statement comes at the end of a book that seems largely intended to suggest the opposite.

Though focusing predominantly on Norway, Stian Bromark and Dag Herbj酶rnsrud鈥檚 Frykten for Amerika (Fear of America) does a splendid job of illuminating European anti-Americanism generally.18 The authors begin by examining the geographical distribution of anti-Americanism, which, while low in Asia, South Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe, is widespread in the Islamic world, is even higher in Western Europe, and is highest of all in France. (53% of Frenchmen 鈥渢ake a negative view of American democratic ideas,鈥?while 64% of Czechs, 67% of Venezuelans, and 87% of Kenyans are positive.) Though fewer than 14% of Frenchmen have visited America, 鈥渕ost have strong views鈥?of it; indeed, 鈥淓uropeans who have not been in the U.S. . . . have the strongest opinions鈥?about it, and malice toward America is inversely proportional to the amount of time individuals have actually spent there. Another illuminating statistic: contrary to the notion that anti-Americanism is a reflection of opposition to Republican presidents and U.S.-led wars, French sympathy for the U.S. stood at 54% in 1988, during the Reagan administration, but dropped to 35% by 1996, when Clinton was in office. Why the decline? Simple: in 1988 the U.S. was a protector; in 1996, after the Berlin Wall fell, it was a resented 鈥渉yperpower鈥?(to employ French politician Hubert V茅drine鈥檚 gratuitous term).

Asked their view of the U.S. from several perspectives (politics, society, foreign policy, etc.), Western Europeans give a thumbs-up only to American popular culture. Why? Because they鈥檝e experienced American movies and music firsthand and can judge for themselves, whereas their social and political views are based on what they鈥檝e been taught in school and told by their media. This gap between negative views inculcated by educators and journalists and positive views founded on personal experience is perhaps nowhere vaster than in Norway, where school textbooks give bogus 鈥渕aterialistic-capitalistic explanations鈥?for one U.S. action after another鈥攑resenting as fact, for instance, that America鈥檚 motive for invading Iraq was oil鈥攂ut where teenagers, according to a BBD%26amp;O study, boast Europe鈥檚 highest 鈥淎mericanization index.鈥?(The Norwegian press sneers about Americans鈥?devotion to McDonald鈥檚 and Coca-Cola, but both corporations have bigger market shares in Norway than in the U.S.)

To be sure, Western European intellectuals often claim, as Norwegian author Jens Bj酶rneboe did in a 1966 essay, 鈥淲e Who Loved America,鈥?that they once were pro-American but, owing to some social change in America or some U.S. government action, have altered their position. The current claim is that Europeans loved America until the Iraq War; before that, it was a truism that they loved America until Vietnam. But Bromark and Herbj酶rnsrud state flatly that 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 the Vietnam War that made European intellectuals, authors and academics anti-American. The truth is that they had been anti-American all along.鈥?As early as 1881, the Norwegian author Bj酶rnsterne Bj酶rnson argued that Europe鈥檚 America-bashing had to stop; even earlier, in 1869, James Russell Lowell complained that Europeans invariably saw America 鈥渋n caricature.鈥?9 Indeed, nineteenth-century European aristocrats despised America as a symbol of progress, innovation, and (above all) equality, ridiculing it as a mongrel land of simple-minded Indians and blacks; later, avaricious Jews were added to the list. These stereotypes soon spread to Americans generally, resulting in today鈥檚 European-establishment view of Americans as materialistic morons.

If privileged Europeans of generations ago quaked in fear because they knew that America, and American equality, represented the future, so too did many of the Continent鈥檚 leading authors and intellectuals. Bromark and Herbj酶rnsrud examine the rather sorry Norwegian record (to which that nation鈥檚 twin titans, Ibsen and Bj酶rnson, were honorable exceptions): in 1889, Knut Hamsun denounced what he considered to be America鈥檚 sexual equality; in 1951, Agnar Mykle sneered that American mothers 鈥渞aise children, not as boys and girls, but first and foremost as people who will become adults, with clean souls, well-scrubbed teeth, well-ordered hair, clean hands and a big smile.鈥?(America鈥檚 excessive cleanliness was long a European theme: Hamsun whined that in the U.S. you couldn鈥檛 鈥渟pit on the floor wherever you want.鈥? But the main flash point was race: in America, complained one Norwegian writer, one 鈥渉ad to fight for one鈥檚 blond scalp in conflict with bloodthirsty natives.鈥?Bj酶rneboe wrote in his teens that the physiognomy of immigrants to America changed after three years (鈥淣orthern and Central Europeans become Indian, Southern Europeans become *******鈥?; Hamsun grumbled that the U.S., by allowing blacks to work in white restaurants, had created 鈥渁 mulatto stud farm鈥? Mykle, spotting a mixed-race couple in New York, had 鈥渢he same uncomfortable feeling as when you see a bulldog mate with a birddog.鈥?Note that these writers were not marginal cranks: they were major literary figures. Nor were these Norwegian writers very different from their colleagues south of the Skaggerak. For an appalling number of them, America鈥檚 supreme iniquity was, as Bromark and Herbj酶rnsrud put it, its 鈥減roject of [ethnic] blending.鈥?Such views, which remained in the European mainstream well into the 1950s, had by the 1970s, however, been supplanted by reflexive, supercilious condemnations of American racism, the implication usually being that racial prejudices of the sort found in the U.S. were utterly foreign to Europeans.

Envy and insecurity have played a role in anti-Americanism, too. Over the generations, men who saw themselves as metropolitan sophisticates traveled to America and were suddenly confronted with their own provinciality. Mykle, we鈥檙e told, 鈥渇elt humiliated as a Norwegian from the moment he arrived in New York鈥? days after a customs official asked him how to spell Oslo, the question still rang in his ears.20 The beloved Norwegian author Rolf Jacobsen, who wrote several anti-American poems before finally visiting the U.S. in 1976 (when he was nearly seventy), complained in a postcard home that 鈥淭here鈥檚 not one mountain here鈥攏ot one mountain ridge.鈥?Away from familiar surroundings, these men felt uprooted, robbed of their souls; this personal disorientation, alas, led not to enhanced self-understanding, but to defensive attacks on America as rootless and soulless (a charge that is now, of course, a clich茅).

Even in Revolutionary times, fear of America meant fear of the modern. Throughout the twentieth century, many Europeans regarded technological progress not as a natural development but as Americanization and considered such phenomena as canned food to be symbols of American dehumanization. Even Sigmund Skard, Norway鈥檚 leading postwar 鈥渆xpert鈥?on the U.S., who was instrumental in shaping the way Norwegian students were (and are) taught about America, admitted that 鈥渢he modern scares me鈥?and projected this fear onto the United States. 鈥淐onsumer civilization,鈥?he charged, threatened 鈥渙ur old civilizations . . . the roots, the simple, classic life.鈥?As distorted as Skard鈥檚 account of modern America, note Bromark and Herbj酶rnsrud, is his sentimental idealization of 鈥渢raditional Norway,鈥?whose history of grim poverty, isolation, and deprivation he turns 鈥渋nto something . . . exclusively positive.鈥?It would appear, then, that when the Norwegian media, in June of 2001, chose to represent my rural experience in Telemark as a face-off between homely, traditional Norwegian virtues and American 鈥淢cDonald鈥檚 culture,鈥?it was only following in Skard鈥檚 footsteps.

New wrinkles were added in the 1960s, when, bizarrely, the longstanding reactionary critique of Americans and American popular culture was supplemented by, and combined with, socialist vitriol about the U.S. political system and the American state. Americans were now not only stupid and vulgar; they were also arrogant, power-hungry imperialists. The terms of this new critique, of course, were lifted largely from America鈥檚 own counterculture; as Bromark and Herbj酶rnsrud succinctly put it, 鈥淎merican artists鈥?imaginations, knowledge, and quality . . . have seduced Europeans into thinking that Americans have no imagination, knowledge, or quality.鈥?This practice has continued to the present day, when major European newspapers eagerly fill page after page with nonsensical anti-American rants by the likes of Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky.

When European journalists and intellectuals aren鈥檛 relishing the latest windy jeremiad by one of these cranks, they鈥檙e busy congratulating themselves for their appreciation of nuance. That鈥檚 their term of choice for what they have and America doesn鈥檛. Americans, they argue, are possessed by na茂ve, simplistic ideals, while Europeans are more aware of real-world complexities. Actually the opposite is closer to the truth. Yes, America is built on an idea, namely liberty; but far from being divorced from reality, it is an idea that Americans have realized, developed, and successfully exported for more than two centuries. We have demonstrated the depth of our commitment as a people to this idea by waging a revolution, a civil war, two World Wars, several smaller wars, and the Cold War in its name. It is, in short, an idea that is utterly indissoluble from our own living, breathing, everyday reality. By contrast, much of Western Europe is founded on an idea of itself that is significantly, and dangerously, divorced from reality. That idea, as Robert Kagan explains so adroitly, is that the world has moved beyond the necessity of war. It is a pretty fiction, but a fiction nonetheless. And keeping it alive requires that one ignore dangerous realities鈥攕uch as the growing problem of militant Islam within Europe鈥檚 own borders.

Europeans mock American religiosity. But American religion, for all its attendant idiocies and cruelties, has never prevented Americans from acting pragmatically. Secular Western European intellectuals, however, have their own version of religion. It is a social-democratic religion that deifies international organizations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and, above all, the U.N. Not NATO, which is about waging war, and which has for that reason been the target of much European criticism in recent years; no, the NGOs are about waging peace, love, brotherhood, and solidarity, and, as such, are, for the elites of Western Europe, beyond criticism, for they embody Western Europe鈥檚 most cherished idea of itself and of the way the world works, or should work. The elites鈥?enthusiasm for these institutions, whether or not they are genuinely effective or even admirable, is a matter of maintaining a certain self-image and illusion of the world that is intimately tied up with their identity as social democrats; America鈥檚 unforgivable offense, as Kagan notes, is that it challenges that image and that illusion; and the degree to which the reality of America is distorted in the Western European media is a measure of the desperate need among Western European elites to preserve that self-image and illusion. It sometimes seems to me a miracle, frankly, that America has any friends at all in some parts of Western Europe, given the news media鈥檚 relentless anti-Americanism. There is no question that the chief obstacle to improved understanding and harmony between the U.S. and Western Europe is the Western European media establishment. It is an obstacle that must somehow be overcome, for Western civilization is under siege, and America and Europe need each other, perhaps more than ever. More sane, sensible European books along the lines of Revel鈥檚 L鈥檕bsession anti-am茅ricaine and Bromark and Herbj酶rnsrud鈥檚 Frykten for Amerika can help.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I had read this before and always liked this article. When you deal with Europeans you will really see their frustration. They are almost like two-face, that batman villain. One time they will mock the US for not having a universal health care system like them, then a day or so later they will trash their own health care system and talk about how long it takes to get crappy service and how high taxes are. Their main issue is that they are truly jealous. They are jealous that they are not as talked about or recognized as the US. They are like the nerdy girl in HS that wants the attention from the best looking guy, and when he ignores her cause she is a geek, she freaks out and starts slashing the tires of his mustang. It really is sad how they live their lives, constantly in the shadow of the US. They get upset that nobody reads their crappy books, watches their crappy movies, or listens to their crappy music. They claim the US has no culture, yet will buy anything American. They make little mocking jokes about how America isn't a country, but 2 continents and they laugh to themselves over this, but then they get upset because nobody cares. At the end of the day they will make their comments and only they will listen to them, because Americans have more important things on their minds. What a sad life they lead.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

So you didn麓t want dialogue you just wanted someone to confirm your bent outlook.

Please stay in America! Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!

HAPPY D'S RIGHT U STAY AWAY FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD. U DONT HAVE THE RIGHT TO FIND OUT HOW AMAZING IT IS Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

The United States isn't that great of a country. I don't care for it that much. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I'm with happy d. The North Koreans are duped into believing that exact same lie about themselves. Shows there's a whole lotta ignorance in the world. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

America is over

It used to believe in the great western thoughts (like Aristotle's, Jesus, John Locke) and now its just money.

Then monopolies took over. White people became compliant, blacks made the culture stupid, and Mexicans eat from the garbage of our lives!!!! Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

It's amazing how ignorant Americans can be...Just because America is one of the most powerful nations in the world, they think they OWN the whole world! But more amazingly, though, is the fact that most Americans are ignorant about other countries and even disrespectful! Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

americans arent better cause they are just people fromm different countries and most of them are from mexico or europe Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

and u r just freaking proud cause u live here Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

maybe we born different faces, different status in life, etc. therefore the blessed human must help people needed for help. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Questions that go on and on like that should be banned from Yahoo Answers.

Especially if they are nationalistic like yours is.

All you do is talk about how the U.S. is better than other countries. Comparism is an ego device, no matter how many words you use.

Consider yourself flagged. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

wow i didn't know that you could put that much information is a question Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Its 75% racist population? Its heroic leader Bush? It being the only country to have ever used nuclear bombs and vaporized Nagasaki and Hiroshima? you tell me Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I'm Nicaraguan and I would like to say:

God Bless America And The World!

}:%26gt;

racism is such an old thing. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Theres so much discrimination in the world, we don't deserve to live in it. We are just killing ourselves. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Americans are Europeans.. at one time. Thier White! Except for the recent Non-white immigrants in the last 50 years. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

My friend, first of all, it's "dysfunctional" and NOT "disfunctional". What's more, every nation/culture has its own inherent characteristics and value. What we need to promote is mutual respect based on common human interests, instead of disseminating hateful subliminal rhetoric. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Now that you reached the maximum level of ignorance, you can close yourself in your little world and stay locked up in your views. Your reasons are only based on stereotypes and shallow reasoning. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

America has the most concentration of Jews followed by Israel. We can't be a great country with that many Jews. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

walmart, buffets, 6 lane motorways, women, prices Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

It's not 100 time better than any other country. In fact it's not even as good as any other country. It is the bullly of the world. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

History books and even traces of evidence from that era tells how Native Americans were cruelly treated all because greedy people wanted their land. In addition Africans were taken from their land only to be slaves... You can walk around and find racism, America the great yeah right. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I have been an American my whole life. I think at one time America was a great nation...long ago. I believe in the past generation (50 years or so) it has truly going down the toilet morally. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Thank you Matt for your profound analysis of Europe and the comparison with a nerdy girl.But a nerd would never slash tires, and on the other hand that handsome guy may be cool, but I'm not sure he's very subtle. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Come to europe Matt, you'll see our life is far from sad.

Quarterback, come out of Texas!! We are not dysfunctional, u are personally, coz u probably voted for Bush twice. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

The United States is a big melting pot so that is why it is great. Also here in the USA we don't have an official language, but of course majority of everyone here speaks English. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

to miss. misunderstood, australia doesn't have an official language, it's more of a melting pot than america, and everyone speaks english here, so then australia by her definiation must be better (which i doubt lol) Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Mexicans are in the U.S. because it is not Mexico. Same goes for those from other countries. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

i don't really care for america Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

It makes me laugh, Americans are so arrougant, less than 5% of Americans havepassports, so it means that 95% of Americans never left the country, and yet they claim America is the best country in the world? How on earth would they know?

such arrogance... Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

America as a country truly is great. Great achievements. Great failures. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well said my friend!!!!! Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I'm an american. i dont agree with this jerk who asked, or the jerk he picked as best answer. Such arrogance is why I'm embarrassed to be an American. america is probably # 1 arrogant and antagonistic and ignorant country- all in 1 Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

define better Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Seriously....... my mind boggles. I bet neither of these two has ever left their home state. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

you idiot, this country's gdp isn't the best, the people aren't the smartest or oldest, and there are 100's of other measurements of how the US IS NOT the "best country in the world." Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

What "article"? The answer is a poorly written opinion essay. I live in the US, and have never seen evidence it is better than other countries. Better how? There are others that are wealthier if that is what you mean. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

PS - The answer supplied is only an EMBARRASSMENT to the United States. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Can't beleive someone would choose such an answer as the best. I lived in Europe for a long time and most don't care about the US. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

IGNORANCE. u dont realsie that country's like britain have1+ political parties. u probably saw the labour party promoting the health service, and then seperately saw the conservative party bad mouthing it

Duuuuh Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Instead of answering the question, you just trashed Europe with a lie after a lie, which proves two things:

1. You did not understand the question.

2. You are an ignorant.

And to make this even worse, your answer gets chosen as the best. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

By the way, I am curious to know why you chose to pick it on Europe. Could you explain to us, in your great style, how will the US be like without the Europeans who once came here 400 years ago? Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

You can see everyone trashing this post is prob from Europe hahaha Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Because we're generally rich. But it's not that good. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Because we're generally rich. But it's not that good. Half of you people live in the United States, and stop blaming government for eveything, hippies. Iraq- 9/11. came across this whikle looking at television questions. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

What an awful answer... =/

I'm moving to France...d'accord? Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

You know how matt said that europeans complain about their health care Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Not a darn thing. Americans are fat, lazy, worry too much about entertainment, and worship sports. They do nothing to stop children from being bullied in school but punish the victims. Sexism is still rampant, and there is too much emphasis on degrees and having loads of stuff. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I am British and we are the scum of the Earth

Most Brits are dickheads, we have a terrible economy, shocking climate which we dont help much, work too long for not enough cash, and are the general scum of the Earth

and in this day and age, still have an unelected monarchy Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

max f is a moron Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I cant believe it, you know, United States (not America!, duh..), wouldn't be nothing without their imperialistic tendencies to take advantage from weaker countries.

U.S. just show up the real intentions... Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Technically, America(s) is 2 continent, not a country... Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

that is the worst answer ive ever read. both of you obviously have no european friends and have never set foot outside america. every country is good in its own way. but you 2 are so ignorant. and the europeans in america are the only great thing about it. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Its amazing how people will trash Max, calling him ignorant and stupid, then turn around and say all Americans are fat and lazy. I'm gonna have to agree with Max on this one... Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

many new things learnt about usa, i dont have much knowledge of rural life of usa. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I was expecting this to come from a mouth of an average New Yorker, now it's America?!?!? Europeans are far more luckier than us. With crappy healthcare and retirement, Americans can't be better than Europeans. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Canada is better :)

USA is just jealous that the Euro is replacing the

US $ as the international currency and that Europe has more internationally accepted world politics Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Got blog? Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

First, America is not 100 times than EVERY other country, so think before you shoot your mouth off. Second, you definitely haven't been outside the Western society (American or European doesn't matter that much) yourself, have you? Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

1 word... IRAQ! (and thats just one of their mistakes)

now u think america is the best.....? Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

What a load of CRAP!Then we wonder why other nations hate us so much!We promote ourselves as the greatest nation %26amp; then when people get here,they find animosity,intolerance,IGNORANC... on top of that we rub all this rubbish you have written in ur "little question" in their faces!U do the math! Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

And just to think....that makes it england's greatest invention! ;) Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Four words: Britain and Satan's sanctuary.

Devil is having the heartiest laugh. Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

very inappropriate to post an entire disertation onto yahoo answers Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I'm an Iranian.I like both America and Europe.If I were to choose between them which one would I hoose? none! Iran is the greatest!

Peace Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

that phrase "God Bless America" is the most retarded saying I have ever had the misfortune of enduring... Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

i really hate america, australia is 100000000000000000000000000000... times better Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

ash(answer no. 12) is 10000000000000000000% right Report It

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I didn't read your opus magnum above, but the bottom line is that America is not even as good as many other countries, much less better.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I have read every word of your "short" question.

Most of us Americans have been taught that we are the strongest and the best country. We have rights and freedoms but do we really. You seem to live in a wonderful place of peace and quiet. Thanks for the information.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

The fact that we THINK we are 100 times better than every other country.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

OMG

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

beer

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Good Novel!!! But here's a question you should ponder, do we as Americans Label ourselves the greatest nation on earth or do other nations label us that? Do we portray ourselves this way, or is this how you perceive us? I think we

are obviously the Greatest not because of our power! but what other country is as watched AND as hated and love at the same time as we are? Our great nation is envied, desired, feared, challenged, loved and hated on a daily basis by other countries. I can't say that any other country pulls out those emotions quit like we do. We are a diverse bunch of people, we have our issues at home, we fight amongst each other, we have Problems from hunger to government squabbling. But the one thing you can't Deni is when we are hit and our people are hurting we know how to pull together better than any other country in the world. We don't require any assistance, we don't ask for any hand outs.. We take care of our own. Look at all the countries we have donated to, and wash away their debt. When our country was in need, Our own people drew together to help each other.. GOD BLESS THE U.S.A.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Here's how you judge the greatness of a country. You ask a simple question.

Are people trying to get in or get out?

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

wow big copy and paste you got there , know one is better than anyone else there is only one planet we all live on it and if you by into "EVERYONE HATES AMERICA " wa wa wa wa then youra fool .we are all in the same boat our boarders are totally open , our rights are being dissolved ,our government are corrupt and working for a minority , the war on terror is a total joke . mass migration through europe and america are by design and a by product of the bigger picture .anyone that is ignorant enough to say that one country is better than another needs to get out of there bubble , dark days ahead do a little research dont get sucked in to the bullshit .

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Well ......on the premise that if enough people say it is so it must be so then of course America is the best .

But considering that most of the people who say it are Americans you have to have some doubt .

practically every person in the US owns a gun and according to the crime statistics they are quite eager to use them.

Ask a black person if America is the best and if he is a person who knows anything about the rest of the world you might get a different answer .

How on earth (( except in America )) can a person be on death row for 15 years and more .

Plea bargain ??? What kind of corruption is that .

America IS a great country with a very curious culture

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Man!!! You need help!

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

If U.S.A. is great it has to be great in comparison to something else.

And herein lies the problem - because most Americans couldn麓t give a sh...it about whatever that something else is!

They don麓t want to visit it, read a book about it, read a newspaper article about it, understand it or even come to terms with it.

If it doesn麓t involve or effect America directly then who the f.ck cares.

And this is the image that the rest of the world sees and responds to.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

so, starting useless wars, wasting money, stealing oil, killing innocent people, making people hate people makes a country better? a lot of people say that people in Iraq are killing each other, so America has to step in and stop them, but they're making it worse, they're killing civilians now. It really isn't any of their business, if they're killing each other it's their leader's responsibility, not yours. Anyway, everyone knows its an excuse to steal oil. It'll be America's downfall, so we just have to wait. Now all the America lovers will click thumbs down because they know i'm right.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I'm yawning.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Sorry, I wasn't paying attention.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

america isn't 100 times better than other countries. i thnk it is a very racist, violent country. you don't have a very good president, no offence.

i think australia is a better country. but i would prefer to live in greece because they're are no idiots there

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

I have a short answer for you, i was born in america and my parents are US citizens born in Mexico.....

My parents words "The American dream and the pursuit of happiness"

My words "Great Opportunities, great education, Freedom...."

We have a bad leader right now but everyone has their bad times and we are having ours, it wont last forever. Stop crying over the war.....their is many other things you can be doing then telling American's why your and other countries are better...if they are so goos just stay there and let us enjoy our country....its simple if you don't like what we do, what we read how we spend our time, our religion,our leaders, our freedom, our wars just plain and simple STAY OUT and ignore this great country, stop bitching and whining! You sound intelligent so you must know an argument can't be won, and never be won....only false victory so leave us Americans alone.....

America %110 if you don't like us ignore us.........

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

"What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country? "

It's statements like this that makes people around the world dislike the United States. I don't even need to read the rest.

Get out and see the REAL world.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Only read the odd line here and there. But get the distinct impression you are not right. I cannot really imagine that America (which is two continents and not a country, dumbass) is the best country - that would be too depressing.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

What a load of crap.

Dude, you're a sheep.

Go back to watching Fox news.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

Thank you for a really intelligent article. It's great food for thought. It's a great argument for people who think that European thinking is the be-all, end-all of world events to know why America isn't as bad as people think. Great research too, it really makes your argument that much more compelling.

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

America is a great country because of the great people that live in it we make America special and if you think that America is great country then you have answered your question and also we may not be as big as china or have as great technology as japan but we are still great we dont have to be big ar have great technology

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

* This is for the people who hate or dislkie America ..

As an American it not only sometimes offends me but also angers me of other people's assumptions that are made about Americans and the United Sates of America. Everyone has different opinions and are free to have them but, it is not only some Americans but other people in all parts of the world who label America as the greatest country because we are the land of the free. I know many people who have come to our country to conquer their dreams and have done so because of our country and it's wonderful opportunies and acceptance. We may have problems but, its not like any other country has never had them before. Some of the finest people in the world were Americans and they forever changed the world. Look at people like Martin Luther King Jr. who had a dream to be created equal and not be looked at or treated differently because of the color of his skin. It's because of him that everyone in our country and the world has those rights. It's because of him that people in all different parts of the world who are of all colors and races can join at the hand and befriend one another and know that because of one person's (an American's) dream that this world is a better place. We might have troubles, we might not be perfect, but we are a free country who has citizens of all different colors and backgrounds. People from all parts of the world come to America because they know that they are welcome to this country. We might not be the brightest but, we love our country, we care for our people, and some of us do try to make the world a better place. We may have ignorrant people in this world and some may be from America but, its people like Martin Luther King Jr, or Oprah who is a very well respected woman who helps people from ALL OVER THE WORLD. Or Bill Gates who is one of the founders of Microsoft, it's because of him that you are on a computer!! And because of his fortune he gives money to people in need ALL OVER THE WORLD. These people (from America) help MANY MANY MANY people from all over the world. They save lives everyday. American doctors save lives everyday, they deliver American children who might even one day change the world like so many other Americans have. So before people diss America you might want to think about how great we really are, not because some people say so but, because we have made a difference. Don't make assumptions about Americans if you haven't met every single American in the world because all of us are different. Yes there are problems in many other places in the world. Places where people are dying from hunger and poverty and we try the best we can to help them believe me no matter what anyone thinks i would never want a person to die from the lack mere change for a life saving shot or food. But you have to remember not to put the blame all on us, what about all the other countries what do they do? Are they helping? Or are you just disrespecting Americans because you think you know them and think that they are all self centered and care for no-one but themselves. We did not cause all of those peoples pain, but we do all that we can to help those people who don't deserve to live the way they do. It is not up to us to care for the rest of the world so don't disrespect us and say that we do nothing. You aren't just talking about our Government because we they aren't great believe i know. And niether is our President but, don't place fault on Americans because you have no idea what you are talking about. You don't know us, we are all different. We all bleed red, we all have hearts (some bigger than others) so don't just go around looking down on the us Americans were not as bad as you think. And before a person talks about the lack of money, help, and care our country gives to the needy you might want to point the finger back at yourself, if you care so much why are you on a computer? Sell the computer for money, give it to a foundation where it will be used to feed the hungry. You care so much you should be willing to give up a few luxuries to save some lives. If you want to talk about the lack of help people in need get then you should be willing to give anything you have. We do make and effort to help those in need and we do make a difference. Our country is not to blame for everything. We are United and our We are the land of the Free.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, PEACE and BROTHERHOOD.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

-MLK Jr.

It is ignorant for one to diss a Country and it's citizens based on assumptions and arrogant pride.

GOD BLESS AMERICA!!

What is it about America that makes it 100 times better than every other country?

i did not read a word of your bookbin the above, but america is the greatest country, because we have more happy people then sad people.

anyone can become whatever the hell they desire to become.

Wanna be a doctor? sure, no problem. Just go to school. Not too much corruption here.

also, how did you get more then 1,000 characters for your 'question?'