EUROPEAN ANTI-AMERICANISM

"Bush was loathed by the British and European Left-liberals before he had done anything in office. He was detested purely and simply for what he was - a point to which I shall return. But the idea that the most recent wave of rabid anti-Americanism stems from mistakes in Iraq is simply absurd. Anyone whose historical memory goes back more than 10 minutes should recall the extraordinary effusion of hatred that spewed from sections of the opinion-forming class as a consequence of America being attacked.

Like most expatriate Americans living in Britain, it was a phenomenon I am unlikely ever to forget. The response to the deaths of 3,000 civilians, by comment writers in the Left-wing newspapers and the producers of "flagship" BBC current affairs programmes, was to orchestrate abuse of the bereaved country....

So, no - George W Bush is not hated here and in Europe because he removed a genocidal tyrant in Iraq and failed to anticipate the chaos that followed.

He is hated because he is the embodiment of everything that the United States is, and Europe is not: not just enormously powerful, militarily and economically, but brashly confident and fervently patriotic. Where Europe is steeped in historical guilt and self-loathing - so immersed in its own unforgivable past that it is trying to fashion a constitution that actually prohibits national pride - America is profoundly proud of the success of its own miraculous achievement.

What it has succeeded in doing is cracking the great dilemma of modern history: how can disparate and ethnically diverse people live together?....

The answer lies not in the post-religious, anti-clerical mania of the European Union which has just rejected a commissioner for espousing mainstream Catholic principles, but in that patriotism so despised by European elites. It is the unifying force of national self-belief with all those ridiculed school rituals - pledging allegiance to the flag, reciting the preamble to the Constitution - that makes America whole and at one with itself. Bush is the personification of that unashamed America and that is why Europe cannot bear the sight of him".

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Master-butcher Arafart is dead. How sad. I was hoping he would live long enough for an Israeli missile to get him. For a summary of the repulsive one's contribution to humanity, see here. And Jeff Jacoby's comment: "Yasser Arafat died at the age of 75, lying in bed and surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves. In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg...."

Good news for Australia's conservative government: "The official unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest levels since monthly records began ..... The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 5.3 per cent in October from 5.5 per cent the previous month.... Releasing the data on Thursday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said the 5.3 per cent jobless rate was the lowest since it began monthly records in February 1978".

Some very biting comments about Americans who despise America and choose to live in Europe instead here. Excerpt: "There are those Americans, or should I say Americans-in-passport-only, who well deserve the title of expatriate. They are predominantly affluent and alienated leftists and they tend to be "writers," i.e., they don't actually write, they in fact have never actually written a sentence, but they nurse their hatred of America during leisurely hours in cafes and kid themselves into thinking that they are writers and patriots. You see them all the time in almost every European city. Mostly male, mostly middle-aged, sitting in cafes, writers all but seldom putting pen to paper. They wear sunglasses, smoke Gitanes and fantasize about under-aged schoolgirls in the delusion that they are experiencing the "authentic" Europe. They know little of the local patois, but fancy themselves fluent".

An interesting argument here to the effect that the Falluja operation is a "Roach Motel" strategy -- first getting the terrorists to "check in" and then killing them off.

Hitchens on the way Leftists hate Christians but praise Islam: "George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he -- and the U.S. armed forces -- have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary -- that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?

I have just put up here an article by a British journalist with a few good bits in it that I like: "Contemporary Republicans are not conservatives. On the contrary, theirs is a revolutionary movement aimed at overthrowing much of the post-World War II order at home and abroad." and "After a glorious period of catch-up with US incomes per head, the EU has experienced a marked relative decline since 1990. Behind this lies a worrying deterioration in both absolute and relative productivity performance; and the proportion of people of working age actually at work is only 64 per cent in the EU of 15 members, against 71 per cent in the US, with particularly poor performance in Belgium, France, Greece, Italy and Spain." [He is right about Europe but is still confused by the old Leftist lie that conservatives oppose all change. It is only foolish or Leftist change that conservatives oppose. They would like LOTS of things changed about the world as it is today.].

Michelle Malkin has up a very clear picture of how "compassionate" Democrats are. The "Red States" are the big charitable donors.

There is an amusing post-election picture of Dan Rather here

Dick McDonald has an excellent gloat about the election result from a retired U.S. Navy Admiral.

I have just put up on Leftists as Elitists the claims by Ted Rall to the effect that Democrat voters really are superior -- followed by a demolition of the arguments he presents.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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