The roots and longevity of anti-Americanism
The topic for the day is anti-Americanism.
Some liberals think it all started with Bush. Some Leftists like to pretend it did, although they may know better. And some people think it’s because America is a swaggering, aggressive, imperial power, and that if Obama abdicates that role and says the proper mea culpas, it will all go away.
Anti-Americanism may not be up there with anti-Semitism in its longevity and protean nature, but it has one characteristic in common: it’s a shape-shifter. Anyone who thinks anti-Americanism (or anti-Semitism) is due to a particular thing, and that if that thing were changed or eliminated it would disappear, is ignoring the hatred’s long and varied history.
If you’re not familiar with James Ceasar’s 2003 essay on anti-Americanism, please give it a read. Ceasar writes that “anti-Americanism reigns as the lingua franca of the intellectual class” in Europe, and that it “rests on the singular idea that something associated with the United States, something at the core of American life, is deeply wrong and threatening to the rest of the world.”
The remainder of Caesar’s essay is dedicated to analyzing the components of that idea as well as its antiquity. Along the way there is much that is fascinating—for example, he traces pre-WWII Japanese concepts of America to the influence of German philosophers on Japan’s elite.
Anti-Americanism started at virtually the same time as the country’s birth—actually, even before its birth—and was a European creation that later spread around the world. Ceaser has identified five epochs and types of anti-Americanism, although there is same overlap among them. But the main point is that any hatred that has persisted for so long in so many differing manifestations partakes a great deal of the irrational, no matter how rational some of its points may sound.
One of the many underpinnings of anti-Americanism—although Ceasar does not focus on this particular one—is America’s idea of itself as an exceptional country. This is somewhat similar to the largely misunderstood idea that the Jews think they are a chosen people, and is used as an excuse for hating each group. Although there’s a great deal of disagreement as to what “American exceptionalism” acutally means (in fact, the notion was coined by a Frenchman, de Tocqueville) in general it refers to the fact that America thinks it has a special place in the world as the bastion of liberty.
This seems to be okay with Europe as long as America is involved in defending Europe’s liberty, which it did at great cost during WWII and the Cold War. And although even then anti-Americanism was rampant in the western part of that continent—especially in academia and lofty philosophical circles—the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union caused western Europe to perceive less need for us, and anti-Americanism began to grow and spread.
George Bush’s presidency served as a focal point and multiplier for an already-existing dislike. Barack Obama will be able to damp down that hatred only to the extent that he humiliates America before the world, surrenders individualism for the collective, and joins Europe in its statist tendencies and welfare-state economy—in other words, to the extent that he surrenders the idea of American exceptionalism.
Barack Obama will be able to damp down that hatred only to the extent that he humiliates America before the world, surrenders individualism for the collective, and joins Europe in its statist tendencies and welfare-state economy–in other words, to the extent that he surrenders the idea of American exceptionalism.
Neo,
I’m sorry, but I don’t quite buy even this, at least as stated.
Just as the Jews could only satisfy the anti-Semites by ceasing to exist (either corporeally or by renouncing Judaisim, while apologizing that they had ever identified with anything so “evil”), so too mere apologies and self-humiliation, as a proxy for the entire country, coming from The One will do nothing to abate this hatred.
America actually is (or perhaps, was) exceptional. It cannot remain America by becoming one of the crowd, any more than a Jew can remain a Jew by identifying with the anti-Semites.
Jamie Irons
Neo,
Now that I think further about your statement, I see that perhaps we’re saying the same thing with a different emphasis.
But I would still insist that America could only get “love” from its enemies, most especially the Europeans, by ceasing to exist as America, and becoming exactly the same as the Europeans — which to me constitutes something more than abandoning an idea. It is more like abandoning one’s self.
Imagine what we’d say to a person, say a patient, who told us that she planned to be sure she held onto her spouse’s “love” and “affection” by turning herself into what he wanted her to be — a female version of himself!
It does happen.
Jamie Irons
Jamie: we are exactly and precisely in agreement. That’s what I meant by the statement you quoted.
And the Jews can only end anti-Semitism by ceasing to exist. Even then, I’m not sure the sentiment wouldn’t linger.
How about this. European society has traditionally been marked by fairly rigid class distinctions. For the most part, the immigrants to America were not from the higher end of the social order. I suppose there were a fair number of “second son” adventure types, but for the most part our ancestors were people who desperately needed to break out of the system. The great waves of migration were often triggered by catastophic events which, as the media reminds even now, affected “the poor and disadvantaged most”.
Therefore, it was easy to look down on the “colonists”, and later the citizens of this lower class enclave. Over time it became habitual.
There is quite possibly a racial component also. Since most European countries were relatively pure racially until recently, and the elites still are, they may not have admired our melting-pot population.
My little thesis presumes that anti-Americanism is not truly endemic in Europe but is centered, as it is in the U.S. itself, among the privileged.
I cited the following at an earlier post here, think it is also relevant to this one…
Michael Chevalier, a Frenchman who visited America 1833-1835, astutely analyzed the reactions of many other foreign visitors:
“Almost all English travelers in this country have seen a great deal that was bad and scarcely anything good. The portrait they have drawn of America and the Americans is a caricatkure which, like all good caricatures, has some resemblence to the original. The Americans have a right to deny the jurisdiction of the tribunal, for they have a right to be tried by their peers and it does not belong to the most complete aristocracy in Europe, the English aristocracy, to sit in judgment on a democracy. Yet all the English travelers in America have belonged to the aristocracy by their connections or their opinions, or have aspired to it, or aped its habits and judgments that they might seem to belong to it.”
The existence and success of America was always perceived as a threat to those who gained their position in life as a result of birth rather than merit.
When I lived in Geneva, Switzerland from 2002-2005 our family was treated to a front-row seat in the Theater of Anti-Americanism. (And anti-semitism too, but that’s a different story.)
Once, when on a school holiday outing with our sons and a few friends from the International School, we were accosted by the pilot of the Lac Leman water taxi, who upbraided us for daring to speak English. “You are in Geneva,” he said in excellent English, “you should be speaking French!”
I explained to him – in French – that when we speak with Genevois of course we use the local language, but among our own group of anglophones we were making plans in our mother tongue. The pilot then quizzed each child – “where are you from?” The Netherlands was okay, Scotland okay, Canada okay, but when my two boys said they were American the pilot said “America, no good!”
We boarded the taxi and spent the entire ride across the lake chatting loudly in French among ourselves, talking about our plans for the day. When we reached the other side the pilot shook my hand and said “Madame, I congratulate you on your children.” I guess he realized his initial assumptions about us were unfair. But lots and lots of Europeans live by those stereotypes, and never have the experience of meeting Americans who can show them how unfair those assumptions are.
I do think Americans’ social mobility is deeply threatening to many Europeans, whose fate in life is decided at a very early age. My boys had 12 year old friends in the Swiss school system who were tested and streamlined into the educational track for which the state deemed them best fitted: some were destined for the sciences, others for technical school and future life as a plumber. The walls of public buildings in Geneva were filled with grafitti by angry young people who have no mobility and no future – their lives will be spent working to pay the pensions of 51 year old retirees. Rage and envy are rampant.
In some ways, anti-Americanism shields the European thinker from the failure of his ideas. He is free to dream of utopia and has a handy scapegoat when his ideas are not realized.
At the end of his essay, Caesar says we should listen more to the criticism of others. I say fine–when the citicism is constructive. All too often it is simply cheap shot or straight out of cloud cuckoo land. Where were the alternatives for dealing with Saddam? I don’t remember much except that we were starving babies with sanctions. Iran? We let them do it their way with negotiations, and I’m still waiting for signs of success. It goes on and on and on. In the end it comes down to letting America do the dirty work while they sit back and criticize. I am bored with Europe’s thinkers and their fantasy worlds, and I have lost much respect for people who allow themselves to be intimidated by them.
There was anti-Americanism back even before I joined the Left in 1977. During the Eighties the Soviet agents of disinformation were working the European Left to build support for the opposition to the U.S. missiles being set up in Western Europe.
Anti-Americanism was really ramped up here at home during that period too.
To blame Bush for it is to ignore history. And so you Leftists can draw your own conclusions from this. It should be obvious and I don’t have to come out and say it.
Jean-Frané§ois Revel’s Anti-Americanism works a treat for this, too.
I think it very unwise to put so much stock on whether the Europeans approve or no. It a vestigial remnant of the “colonial cringe,” and it only gives the Europeans the power, and some incentive, to withhold approval. They are of course happy to accept that power if you give it them, but why you would and what anyone thinks they have done to deserve it are beyond me.
In your earlier note on nationalism / patriotism, you mention a bit of racial purity.
“Pride in country” is closely associated with “Pride in People”, which is close to race.
In Slovakia, there are many Hungarian Slovaks — Hungarian speaking ‘Hungarians’ with Slovak citizenship. On the old passports there were identities: nationality and citizenship. (Slovak Jews were NOT Slovak Slovaks; and neither are Slovak Gypsies=Roma).
This is an unchosen and unchoosable birth identity.
Despite living for 18 years here, I can never be a Slovak. In theory, everybody in the world can become an American. In practice, for virtually any country, more folk would rather become Americans than join that other country.
The ‘in crowd’ always has some contempt for the ‘out crowd’, the non-exclusives. If the out-crowd is also better, by most measures, the contempt will become a hatred.
Most intellectuals will hate America much like they hate capitalism — and in contradiction with the rationales they give.
Bullseye. As a Californian who lived in Boston for five years, I was amused by the social pretensions there (Cabots speaking only to the Lodges, who speak only to God, that sort of thing) and the references to “bluebloods.” As I pointed out, the bluebloods of New England are descended from the paupers, horse thieves, pickpockets, and prostitutes of England, since by definition anyone who really was a blueblood would, of course, stay in England. It was a long five years, needless to say.
The funny part is that Europeans (certainly the British) look down on New Englanders as pretentious parvenus (especially when talking about how old something is in New England, never realizing that it’s brand-new by European standards).
Anti-Americanism hardly started with Bush; it goes back generations, perhaps centuries, and is not confined to Europe. Our own leftist classes, aided and abetted by the media, have wallowed in it for years. Recently, cleaning out my parents’ house, I came across news clippings from the early 1980’s. The uniformly took exactly the same line and tone as articles excoriating Bush (stupid, war-monger, unenlightened, greedy, looking out only for his friends, heartless, the lot). Almost as if the whole campaign was orchestrated…
Forgot to include the old line that 200 years is old in the US, while 200 miles is far in Europe.
E Said ” Once, when on a school holiday outing with our sons and a few friends from the International School, we were accosted by the pilot of the Lac Leman water taxi, who upbraided us for daring to speak English. “You are in Geneva,” he said in excellent English, “you should be speaking French!” ”
There was a time when I would have thought, as an American, he had no buisiness saying that. I would have also have thought the French were wrong to oppose McDonalds as an American intrusion. But what I did not realize, until recently, was that in a way I was supporting Multiculturlism against National Pride and Culture. How can I say that immigrants to the US should learn English when I condem a few Europeans who still love their own countries culture? The nations of Europe need more folks who love their country instead of loving the UN, the EU, Multiculturlism and unrestrained immgration. But I am not holding my breath on that one……
Jealousy. It really is that simple, isn’t it. I go to another blog quite often where people from England pop in and speak a bit. Nice folks, individually. From what they say, an educated guess is about 55 to 70% of the population of England would leave tomorrow morning if they could pull it off. And where do you think they dream of being able to go?
Just as in the way our nation was founded, it almost seems to truly appreciate our great nation, one has to come from elsewhere.
America is a great place to live, work, and raise a family. The greatest the world has to offer. I am deeply disappointed with what some of us want to do to it, and what some of us are allowing them to do.
Jon Baker-
because the Americans coming to visit are guests, not new citizens, and aren’t demanding that others change their speech to English so they may understand?
When I lived in Japan, I learned what polite Japanese I could, out of manners– the gentlemen I know who married and moved there learned the whole language, because it was their new home.
Different situation.
Neo said: “misunderstood idea that the Jews think they are a chosen people,”
As a Christian, though quite a struggling one at times, I have never understood how people calling themselves “Christian” , can hate the Jews. Most of the Authors of the Bible are Jewish. The Christian apostles were Jewish. Jesus was Jewish! So how do these “christians ” come up with the idea of hating Jews? My guess is in many cases they have never actually spent much time reading the Bible for themselves, but have relied on some “teacher” instead. I can only recall one time where I stated that I did not care what hapened to in the middle East. It was around the time of the Amnesty push a couple of years ago and out of frustration with our open border I said something like ” I did not care what happened in the middle East”. It was on this blog, but I felt bad very quickly.
Of course i still have quite a bit of frustration that the city gate is open while our army fights an enemy on the other side of the planet.
I worked for a company owned by a Brit for years. He had to come to America and build a business in order to be able to afford a Jaguar.
What we call American exceptionalism gets recognised by our entitlement class and their foreign counterparts as magical omnipotence failing to be magical for them. When it was never magic in the first place.
It’s an old hatred. The weak of the strong. The ugly of the attractive. The poor of the wealthy. Losers of winners. And, if you can believe The Odyssey, the dead of the living.
OB, you have distinctly the wrong idea about the original English settlers of New England. They represented a cross section of the Establishment and society of East Anglia, which at the time was the richest and most productive part of England. I believe that East Anglia also had, like the Netherlands and Switzerland and perhaps the lowlands of Scotland, a relatively weak aristocracy.
The East Anglians came across as intact communities and families. They were highly educated and very productive. I have seen estimates that say that New Englanders between say 1780 and 1800 had the world’s highest per capita income. David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed, is a great reference.
My impression is, high WASPs from Boston and New York still cut more ice in London than you might guess; there are still a lot of Yanks in the family tree from the 19th and early 20th centuries, when American heiresses kept a fair number of titled families afloat. Sarah Lyall’s new book, The Anglo Files, might shed some light on contemporary attitudes, but I haven’t read it.
When you come to the Mitteleuropaische vom und zu’s, it’s a different deal altogether.
Occam’s Bear, you’re confusing New Englanders with Australians. Similar vowels, totally different provenance.
I’m a New Englander – born in Connecticut, raised and educated in Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. I’ve had a number of British friends tell me (as a compliment) that I’m more British than most Americans they meet.
I’m living in Minnesota now, and I have had more culture shock from living in the Upper Midwest than I ever did going from New England to Europe.
Occam, I’m sorry I called you a Bear! I meant Beard.
Spot-on regarding American exceptionalism. America is an ideal that transcends race or social class. It is not just bountiful resources that make America the land of opportunity, it is our attitude you can be whatever you want to be. One common thread I have noted talking with immigrants about why they came here is they wanted to be individuals and not part of a herd.
Over the years I have talked with people from Russia, Sweden, Germany, France, Mexico, Libya, various Asian countries and more. All have rebelled against the idea they should be working to support someone else, but even more so they vehemently wanted to think for themselves. One young Russian lady described Russians as having blinders on, seeing only what their leaders wanted them to see and afraid to see anything different. (I suppose that is understandable given the 20th century Russian experience.) Europe is home to repressive group-think while America stands for freedom. That is where I put the origin of anti-Americanism. All the other stuff plays a part but they hate us for who we are.
BTW, the Phillipinos used to have a saying: “Yankee go home! And take me with you!”
I think they hate us because they hate the ideas of individual liberty and natural law. It is their wish to finally destroy our Constitution because the ideas therein derive from natural law and the Creator from the Judaeo-Christian heritage. We are the last bastion of that Romano-Graeco-Christian Civilization of Late Antiquity.
They work tirelessly to put us under the domination of international law and the United Nations. And now they have substantial support for the destruction of the U.S. Constitution from within our own legal establishment.
We need a rebellion and enough gallows to deal with those traitors.
“American Captain Freed;
3 pirates killed
1 in custody”
I have two words to say: Yeah, baby!
I am beginning to think we are having the wrong discussion since I believe anti-Americanism has entered a different phase: globalization.
I posit that “Americanism” is driving globalization because of its efficiency and ability to scale better than most systems (I am thinking of its properties of individualism, natural law and federalism in particular). In this phase the world’s cultures and, more importantly, cultural expectations of risk tolerance(American culture is a particularly risk tolerant culture) are being challenged everywhere. Cultural exchanges across this globe are freer to occur than at any time in the history of humankind and indeed the world is homogenizing more so than ever before. This means, by necessity, that cultural influences flow inward to this country more easily than ever before and especially because there are so many more of them than there are of us. Anti-Americanism is indeed turning inwards as we Americans enter the global conversation and use our own gifts of logic to try to make sense of the world that is in our face as much as we are in the faces of the rest of the world. If you feel like it is “us” against “the world” you are probably correct, but it is also “us” against “ourselves” so the problem is harder. We Americans are facing global homogeneity along with everyone else.
The questions we ought to be discussing amongst ourselves are: 1) What are the strongest American ideals that ought to, and hence are more likely to survive in the future world; 2) Can indeed American ideals scale to the size of the entire globe; 3) How will “American” ideals morph when filtered through the lens of differing cultures (what would “Chinese-Americansm” look like); 4) Can we, should we and how could we, direct the evolution of “Americanism” on a global scale?
I believe current anti-Americanism is a symptom of a struggle that looks less like “us” (e.g., European elites) versus “them” (dirty Americans) and more like a symptom of the struggles people are having with regards to the basic human question, “Who am I?” Cultures around the world are morphing, including our own. This is a painful process. What will survive globally are the very best of our ideals while the weaker aspects will be ghettoized here and there. What are the strongest, and most admired aspects of Americanism and how do we scale those ideals globally?
Perhaps we, ourselves, need to stop thinking in terms of “Americanism” if we are to help the world in the process of amalgamation. Perhaps “Humanism” is the best outlook. What principles are needed to be scaled that will best allow billions of individual, proud, intelligent and capable humans scale a global society? How do we help people around the world believe that the best of “Americanism” was actually developed by themselves? (Think like a consultant here: how do you help your client believe that your great ideas were their own great ideas?) Do we need a new global “Declaration of Independence” for the individual? In order to scale do we need to develop something new, more complete, and better able to scale?
Let me clarify my remarks above. I didn’t mean immigrants to New England were literally horse thieves, etc. (although note that Australia was opened as a penal colony because the British could no longer transport undesirables to North America after the Revolutionary War).
My point was that New Englanders were quacking about being “bluebloods,” which they most decidedly were not. Such quacking invited the conclusion that Lord and Lady Muck-a-muck decided to upstakes, leave the manor, and move to the New World. Didn’t happen. New England was founded by religious Dissenters, who were marginalized in England, and therefore of minimal social standing. The attempt to arrogate to themselves a higher social standing in the US based upon such in England was pure pretension. (Similarly, when I lived in the UK, visiting Americans within hours of arrival at Heathrow would often start sporting a faux British accent. Straight-up pretension.)
It is also worth noting that New England was strongly anti-British until WWI, a tendency reinforced by the Irish immigration in the mid-19th century. Only in the 20th century did New England start to look to England for acceptance and approval. Note, in this connection, Daniel Webster’s compiling a dictionary specifically to distinguish American from British usage, and England’s support for the South in the Civil War (source of cotton, tobacco, and other raw materials) and opposition to the New England and the North (industrial and maritime competitors). From the time of the Revolutionary War to WWI there was no love whatever lost between England (as opposed to Scotland, Wales, and Ireland) and New England.
With all due respect, they probably meant this as flattery, since so many Americans would be pleased to hear it. I lived in the UK for many years, and the best man at our wedding once told me I was the most American American he’d ever met. He, being strongly pro-American (and the Brit half of another trans-Atlantic couple), meant that as a compliment (although many would not have meant it as such), and I took it that way.
Occam: I always tell my British friends who complain about American accents – quacking and all – that we Yanks been keeping their language pure for them. That’s why follks in Newport pronounce their main street “Thaymes” (spelled Thames) and not “Tems.” Check out Robert MacNeil’s “The Story of English” for more on this.
I’m curious who these people in New England are who were “quacking about being ‘bluebloods.'” But a discussion of one’s family roots is something lots of Yankees really enjoy. History is important to New Englanders, quite a few of whom can trace their origins back to Colonial days. I don’t think they’re wrong to honor their history.
A few years ago my son had to do a family geneology project for social studies, which required him to interview the family member who had most recently immigrated to the US. This was a poser for us – on both his mother’s and father’s side, the family had been in this country since before the Revolution. Short of holding a sceance, there wasn’t much he could do to fulfill the assignment. He wound up being a kid with no culture – a plain old American, without a hyphen of any kind. I found this faintly offensive – a New England lineage and culture is a real thing, not “less than” anyone else’s.
I agree that snobs are tiresome wherever they appear, here or abroad.
OB, your logic is usually excellent, but this time your history is faulty.
The Puritans built New England, and they were not the same as the Pilgrims; they were insiders, not outsiders. They ran one of the universities (Cambridge) and were the backbone of the Parliamentary Party. They ended up taking control of the country during the Civil War. Nevertheless, as Calvinists they represented the religious settlement of the Tudor regime, i.e. the Old Establishment.
New England was the heartland of the Federalist Party, which from the middle 1790’s on was staunchly pro-British (think John Adams), in contrast to Jefferson’s Republicans and their support for Revolutionary France. When the Republicans finally got their war with Britain in 1812, New England went into massive resistance and threatened secession.
The same pattern continues through the 19th century, with Whig and then Republican administrations achieving rapprochement with Britain, and Democratic administrations prone to conflict, following the example of the “Old Republicans.” I recall that that last major diplomatic confrontation between the U.S. and the U.K. was in 1896 over Venezuela, which would be the S. Grover Cleveland (D) Administration.
We can map the demographic history on to this fairly easily. The Irish became Democrats, since being against the overbearing Whig/Republican WASPs of New England was pretty similar to being against the overbearing Tory Anglo-Irish Ascendancy.
To the extent that many real bluebloods (e.g. Lord Fairfax) came to America, they came to the South…along with most of the convicts!
As we Yankees say, Oblio – you’re wicked smaht!
Can’t give you specifics, E, but if I heard the phrase “bluebloods of New England” once, I heard it a hundred times. That and the Hub of the Universe crap (Boston isn’t even the hub of the Northeast) used to grate, I confess.
IMO, no one is a blueblood. No one. And the very notion is corrosive to democratic ideals. Regard for family history and lineage is great, until and unless it shades into imputing to oneself some benefit arising from such history. Chuck Battenberg singlehandedly puts paid to the notion that a prominent family history has any bearing on the merit of an individual.
During my sojourn in Boston I attended a gathering of one of the families commonly styled as God’s interlocutors, as defined above. The patriarch of the clan was a sharp cookie, no doubt, as was a grandson (great-grandson?). The rest: walking examples of regression to the mean. To the drive-up window born.
Speaking of family histories, the family of a friend of mine (of Mexican descent) has lived in California since before there was a United States. His daughter apparently qualifies to join the DAR! How much fun would that meeting be? /g I suspect that Mexican descent is not quite what the DAR had in mind.
I agree. No less — but also no more — than anyone else’s.
This is true. The present British accent is recent, postdating the Revolution. Brits used to speak pretty much as we (and the Canadians) do, until the Home Counties accent became the desirable one. Lecturing in the UK, when teased by students about my American accent, I used to inform them that Shakespeare spoke more or less as I do (according to colleagues in linguistics). BBC English is of relatively recent vintage.
Oblio, I stand corrected on my history.
(Are you sure about the Federalists being pro-British? Why were Tory sympathizers run out en masse after the Revolution? My impression was that the entire country was pretty anti-British (no time to Google), and that American political parties differed primarily in the primacy they sought for the federal government vis a vis the states.)
I think the major driver here was slavery/abolition, and later political patronage. New England was a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment, and therefore of the modern Republican Party, whereas the Irish were notoriously opposed on grounds of economic self-interest as the group above blacks. That is why, for example, the draft riots in New York in 1863 resulted in so many lynchings (ca. 50, IIRC) of freed slaves. So abolition on one hand, and on the other, the success of corrupt Democratic machines (of the Tammany Hall ilk) providing patronage were probably more important than identification of New Englanders with Britain.
Just for clarity’s sake – I say anti-Americanism is centered among the leftist elite – not just the generic privileged. This explains the distinction between, say, WFB and Barack Obama.
I think your analysis is entirely correct neo. Now, may we finally say BHO doesn’t love his country? At least as it is?
Occam’s Beard:
Noah Webster did the dictionary. Daniel Webster did the oratory and legislation.
OB, your observations about the Irish, Tammany Hall, and the Draft Riots are spot on.
There is a great Kenneth Roberts novel that touches on the Federalist reversal and the enactment of the Alien and Sedition Acts: Lydia Bailey (1947). Set in 1800, it reads like it is ripped from today’s headlines, with toxic politics, Washington skullduggery, revolution and intervention in Haiti, problems in race relations, Barbary pirates, and coups in the Middle East. Highly recommended beach reading!
Neo, you should read an excellent essay by Spengler in Asia Times: the same line of argumentation and valuable insights:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KC17Ak03.html
May be, there could be psychologic analogies between self-hating Jews and self-hating Americans, like internalisation of external hate? At least, quite often they are the same individuals.
OB, along with Oblio, I also recommend DHF’s Albion’s Seed as the work to read about colonial culture. You will see much of what you already know or have intuited, but nailed down with evidence and brilliantly analyzed. The Virginians, generally from the SW of England, included many of the younger sons of nobility (FFV), but also many indentured servants, transports, and general ne’er-do-wells. The East Anglian Puritans who settled New England were tradesmen and small farmers of intense religiosity. Exceptions abounded, of course, especially in the seaports of Salem and Boston.
I say this as one whose Mayflower ancestor was the one known criminal of the bunch, Stephen Hopkins.
Gringo, thank you. It didn’t sound right when I typed it, but I had to leave and didn’t have time to reflect.
Thanks also for the reading suggestions, guys!
He was framed!