Paul Johnson had a really on-point evaluation of Anti-Americanism in his Forbes magazine column here titled "Anti-Americanism Is Racist Envy." The high points from the article are the following:
Anti-Americanism is the prevailing disease of intellectuals today. Like other diseases, it doesn't have to be logical or rational. But, like other diseases, it has a syndrome--a concurrent set of underlying symptoms that are also causes. * First, an unadmitted contempt for democracy. The U.S. is the world's most successful democracy. * Second, anti-Americanism is a function of cultural racism. An astonishingly high proportion of European elites know very little about U.S. history or culture and even deny that they have a separate existence apart from their European roots. * Third, European elites tend to look at Americans as a subcivilized mass, whose function is to be obedient consumers in a system run by big business.
The truth is, any accusation that comes to hand is used without scruple by the Old World intelligentsia. Anti-Americanism is factually absurd, contradictory, racist, crude, childish, self-defeating and, at bottom, nonsensical. It is based on the powerful but irrational impulse of envy--an envy of American wealth, power, success and determination. It is an envy made all the more poisonous because of a fearful European conviction that America's strength is rising while Europe's is falling.I think it is fair to say that Anti-Americanism is the "Fantasy Ideology of Intellectuals." Go read the whole article. Johnson's shot at the French state system, and the Adm. Horatio Nelson telescope to a blind eye like look by the EU-nicks at America's founding consitutional convention, are worth the price of admission. The one thing Johnson did not follow through on were the political implications of American-European relations. America as the world's most successful practitioner of praticipatory democracy - and those who deny it identify themselves as Anti-Americans -- is living proof of the failure of the intellectuals beliefs. The European intellectual class' cognitive dissonance will drive them to do anything and everything to thwart or disprove America's power and success. The French and wider E.U. actions in the run up and aftermath to the War in Iraq should be seen in that light. These people are not America's friends or allies. And America is at war.
If "Freedom" did not characterize America, nobody would envy America! Freedom to choose has made possible human creativity! Inventivness and creativity are choice-making procedures. Ever write a poem, paint a picture, or create a new recipe, etc.? You cannot do it without making choices.
Your Rights as earth's Choicemaker are NOT a grant of government or man. They are a Gift,an endowment of the Creator God, to His creation, man. Any person or system which opposes your free Rights is opposing the GOD who gave them to you. ALL tyrants are in opposition to GOD and nature. Humans must be free to choose in order to fulfill GOD's purposes in making you an agent of His Freedom -- of Himself! DO NOT give any credit to any man-made system for what only the Creator GOD can and has done. YOU were made in His image. Now, go ahead and live like it!
The next time you see/hear of a cleric from ANY religion wave a 'holy' book and claim to speak for the GOD of your creation -- and opposes Human Rights -- you will know he is a FRAUD and does NOT deserve respect or obedience. Never mind 'envy.' Just be Thankful -- and live it!!! JFB
CONTEMPORARY COMMENTS
"I should think that if there is one thing that man has
learned about himself it is that he is a creature of
choice." Richard M. Weaver
"Man is a being capable of subduing his emotions and
impulses; he can rationalize his behavior. He arranges
his wishes into a scale, he chooses; in short, he acts.
What distinguishes man from beasts is precisely that he
adjusts his behavior deliberately." Ludwig von Mises
"To make any sense of the idea of morality, it must be
presumed that the human being is responsible for his
actions and responsibility cannot be understood apart
from the presumption of freedom of choice."
John Chamberlain
"The advocate of liberty believes that it is complemen-
tary of the orderly laws of cause and effect, of
probability and of chance, of which man is not completely
informed. It is complementary of them because it rests in
part upon the faith that each individual is endowed by
his Creator with the power of individual choice."
Wendell J. Brown
"Our Founding Fathers believed that we live in an ordered
universe. They believed themselves to be a part of the
universal order of things. Stated another way, they
believed in God. They believed that every man must find
his own place in a world where a place has been made for
him. They sought independence for their nation but, more
importantly, they sought freedom for individuals to think
and act for themselves. They established a republic
dedicated to one purpose above all others - the preserva-
tion of individual liberty..." Ralph W. Husted
"We have the gift of an inner liberty so far-reaching
that we can choose either to accept or reject the God
who gave it to us, and it would seem to follow that the
Author of a liberty so radical wills that we should be
equally free in our relationships with other men.
Spiritual liberty logically demands conditions of outer
and social freedom for its completion." Edmund A. Opitz
"Above all I see an ability to choose the better from the
worse that has made possible life's progress."
Charles Lindbergh
"Freedom is the Right to Choose, the Right to create for
oneself the alternatives of Choice. Without the possibil-
ity of Choice, and the exercise of Choice, a man is not
a man but a member, an instrument, a thing."
Thomas Jefferson
THE QUESTION AND THE ANSWER
Q: "What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son
of man that You visit him." Psalm 8:4
A: "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against
you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing
and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and
your descendants may live." Deuteronomy 30:19
Q: "Lord, what is man, that You take knowledge of him?
Or the son of man, that you are mindful of him?" Psalm
144:3
A: "And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose
for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the
gods which your fathers served that were on the other
side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose
land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will
serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15
Q: "What is man, that he could be pure? And he who is
born of a woman, that he could be righteous?" Job 15:14
A: "Who is the man that fears the Lord? Him shall He
teach in the way he chooses." Psalm 25:12
Q: "What is man, that You should magnify him, that You
should set Your heart on him?" Job 7:17
A: "Do not envy the oppressor and choose none of his
ways." Proverbs 3:31
Q: "What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son
of man that You take care of him?" Hebrews 2:6
A: "I have chosen the way of truth; your judgments I have
laid before me." Psalm 119:30 Let Your hand become my
help, for I have chosen Your precepts." Psalm 119:173
References:
Genesis 3:3,6 Deuteronomy 11:26-28; 30:19 Job 5:23
Isaiah 7:14-15; 13:12; 61:1 Amos 7:8 Joel 3:14
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Sir Isaac Newton
The greatest scientist in human history
a Bible-Believing Christian
an authority on the Bible's Book of Daniel
committed to individual value
and individual liberty
Daniel 9:25-26 Habakkuk 2:2-3 KJV selah
"What is man...?" Earth's Choicemaker JOEL 3:14 KJV
http://www.geocities.com/James-Baxter/
Parts of this may be good, but I can not take seriously someone who states the following:
"First, an unadmitted contempt for democracy. The U.S. is the world's most successful democracy."
Acutally, we are the most successful Constitutional Republic. Big Difference, such as lack of mob rule.
MO
Many grains of truth in this sandbox.
de Toqueville wrote of his - and the still-prevailing Euro - vision of the US as a people who kept trying to get/achieve more: he, and current Euros, could not understand why anyone would want more than had been allotted to them by their place in society at birth. Such an attitude is incomprehensible, thus unnatural, suspect, and feared; destructive of the natural order; generative of social upheaval; dangerous to the establishment; unwilling to follow orders without thinking; etc.
In short, everything that despots have wanted to stamp out since the first tribal chief. The strange thing to us, of course, is that they do not see themselves as despots.
But then, nor did Atilla so view himself.