That's from a 2013 article in Vanity Fair, examining why European elites unjustifiably feel so smugly superior to Americans and their country. I thought it might be fitting, this July 4th, to bring it to your attention. Here's an excerpt.
Enough. Enough, enough, enough of this convivial rant, this collectively confirming bigotry. The nasty laugh of little togetherness, or Euro-liberal insecurity. It’s embarrassing, infectious, and belittling. Look at that European snapshot of America. It is so unlike the country I have known for 30 years. Not just a caricature but a travesty, an invention. Even on the most cursory observation, the intellectual European view of the New World is a homemade, Old World effigy that suits some internal purpose. The belittling, the discounting, the mocking of Americans is not about them at all. It’s about us, back here on the ancient, classical, civilized Continent. Well, how stupid can America actually be? On the international list of the world’s best universities, 14 of the top 20 are American. Four are British. Of the top 100, only 4 are French, and Heidelberg is one of 4 that creeps in for the Germans. America has won 338 Nobel Prizes. The U.K., 119. France, 59. America has more Nobel Prizes than Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia combined. Of course, Nobel Prizes aren’t everything, and America’s aren’t all for inventing Prozac or refining oil. It has 22 Peace Prizes, 12 for literature. (T. S. Eliot is shared with the Brits.)
And are Americans emotionally dim, naïve, irony-free? Do you imagine the society that produced Dorothy Parker and Lenny Bruce doesn’t understand irony? It was an American who said that political satire died when they awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger. It’s not irony that America lacks; it’s cynicism. In Europe, that arid sneer out of which nothing is grown or made is often mistaken for the creative scalpel of irony. And what about vulgarity? Americans are innately, sniggeringly vulgar. What, vulgar like Henry James or Eleanor Roosevelt or Cole Porter, or the Mormons? Again, it’s a question of definitions. What Americans value and strive for is straight talking, plain saying. They don’t go in for ambiguity or dissembling, the etiquette of hidden meaning, the skill of the socially polite lie. The French in particular confuse unadorned direct language with a lack of culture or intellectual elegance. It was Camus who sniffily said that only in America could you be a novelist without being an intellectual. There is a belief that America has no cultural depth or critical seriousness. Well, you only have to walk into an American bookshop to realize that is wildly wrong and willfully blind. What about Mark Twain, or jazz, or Abstract Expressionism?
What is so contrary about Europe’s liberal antipathy to America is that any visiting Venusian anthropologist would see with the merest cursory glance that America and Europe are far more similar than they are different. The threads of the Old World are woven into the New. America is Europe’s greatest invention. That’s not to exclude the contribution to America that has come from around the globe, but it is built out of Europe’s ideas, Europe’s understanding, aesthetic, morality, assumptions, and laws. From the way it sets a table to the chairs it sits on, to the rhythms of its poetry and the scales of its music, the meter of its aspirations and its laws, its markets, its prejudices and neuroses. The conventions and the breadth of America’s reason are European.
This isn’t a claim for ownership, or for credit. But America didn’t arrive by chance. It wasn’t a ship that lost its way. It wasn’t coincidence or happenstance. America grew tall out of the cramping ache of old Europe.
There's much more at the link.
It's worth a read, if others' opinion about America bothers you. Since moving here almost thirty years ago, I've become more and more proud to be an adopted American. Despite all this country's innumerable problems, I wouldn't choose to be anywhere else. I'd rather stay here and help fix my home.
A happy and blessed Independence Day to us all!
Peter
10 comments:
I've lived in Europe and seen what they have, and I've lived in the US, and I'll take America. It doesn't mean that we don't have issues here, but we fly the flag almost all of the time, and the ideals that went into the Constitution of limited government still resonate with many of us. Old Europe and its relentless taxation make the Americans look like pikers.
God Bless America - Happy Independence day to you and MRSBRM!
We are what Europe had the potential to become. Unfortunately, Europe had neither the ambition or the intelligence.
I've often thought that the basis for the nastiest Euro/Brit snobbery about the US was based on the expectations of those left behind when various Europeans and Britons legged it for the US. They were viewed as political cranks, ne're-do-wells, religious non-conformists, failed farmers, semi--criminal, failed everythings ... and their former neighbors comfortably assumed that they would continue to be failures - poor, starving, eaten by alligators and slaughtered by Indians, and it would serve the useless beggars right. But instead - those political cranks, religions non-conformists, failed-everythings ... they and their children thrived, prospered, grew rich and powerful, and their success rankled something awful among the left-behind Euros.
I'm European and I'm not anti-American or Euro-elitist. I think we both have our problems, and none of us are blameless when it comes to quickly disparaging the "cousins over the pond" in both directions.
You Americans still show traces of a complex for being a relatively new nation by seeing belittling intentions when some European expresses some opinion on America, but that's not something you should be bothered with. Actually the concept of nation is not really that old anyway according to the majority of scholars, first accepted nation being the Dutch Republic in the late 16th century, less than 50 years before the first American colony.
What does bother a lot of Europeans is your attitude regarding what you need to do to "protect your freedom", which is pretty hypocritical when some of your folks stated that about your military deployed in Iraq - that had nothing to do with your freedom and everything to do with economic interest. America is involved into pretty much the whole world and too often uses that slogan to justify whatever money-making scheme your ruling class concocted and pushed to some other nation. The end of WWII put America into a favorable position compared to the rest of the world, being the only power with intact economic base and while the Marshall plan helped Europe's recovery tremendously, it also placed the "ball and chain" of American interest in every relevant aspect of post-war Europe. I'm sure you guys will see this as ungrateful attitude, but when American interest dictate who we are allowed to do business with in this day and age (that's no fable, check the sanctions regulations imposed by the US in the financial sector to everyone) you may perhaps begin to understand the base of the resentment.
On the other hand we Europeans have much to inflated opinion on our level of civilization and culture, which is not that fantastic as we like to think and others - not only Americans - have at least an equally valuable culture.
So we all need to review our attitude in respect to the "cousins over the pond" in both directions.
"Since moving here almost thirty years ago, I've become more and more proud to be an adopted American. Despite all this country's innumerable problems, I wouldn't choose to be anywhere else. I'd rather stay here and help fix my home."
Me too, brother.
Differ.
I agree with LL.
I get the impression that people in Europe would like to be like Americans. Even the European union flag has stars like the Betsy Ross flag, and the lingua franca is English, and not, it seems, because of the Brits. They haven't grasped the idea of individual liberty the way we have it seems. And the term "European" isn't really specific enough, as far as I am concerned. Are you French, German,Italian, Danish or what? I think we have a lot more in common with each other in the United States than Europe ever will. This is okay, and not a bad thing in any way, it is just my observation.
I'm happy if Germans or French or Belgians or Finns find their homeland, culture, and people superior to mine. Good for you, lads: Try to be pleasant about the business when you visit here: noblesse oblige. But when you are at home, sneer away!
Of course, you know I'll be the same about my country, too, yes?
No, what's thoroughly obnoxious are my countryman who pant after Europeans, and despise our patrimony. Bad cess to them.
Touche
Think of America as the result of a social distilling process. We partake the nature of the light, volatile fraction, and Europe the nature of the residue.
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