FrontPage Magazine | Dennis Prager | Nov. 25, 2007
One of the most widely held beliefs in the contemporary world — so widely held it is not disputed — is that, with few exceptions, the world hates America. One of the Democrats’ major accusations against the Bush administration is that it has increased hatred of America to unprecedented levels. And in many polls, the United States is held to be among the greatest obstacles to world peace and harmony.
But it is not true that the world hates America. It is the world’s left that hates America. However, because the left dominates the world’s news media and because most people, understandably, believe what the news media report, many people, including Americans, believe that the world hates America.
That it is the left — and those influenced by the left-leaning news and entertainment media — that hates America can be easily shown.
Take Western Europe, which is widely regarded as holding America in contempt, but upon examination only validates our thesis. The French, for example, are regarded as particularly America-hating, but if this were so, how does one explain the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France? Sarkozy loves America and was known to love America when he ran for president. Evidently, it is the left in France — a left that, like the left in America, dominates the media, arts, universities and unions — that hates the U.S., not the French.
The same holds true for Spain, Australia, Britain, Latin America and elsewhere. The left in these countries hate the United States while non-leftists, and especially conservatives, in those countries hold America in high regard, if not actually love it.
Take Spain. The prime minister of Spain from 1996 to 2004, Jose Maria Aznar, is a conservative who holds America in the highest regard. He was elected twice, and polls in Spain up to the week before the 2004 election all predicted a third term for Aznar’s party (Aznar had promised not to run for a third term). Only the Madrid subway bombings, perpetrated by Muslim terrorists three days before the elections, but which the Aznar government erroneously blamed on Basque separatists, turned the election against the conservative party.
There is another obvious argument against the belief that the world hates America: Many millions of people would rather live in America than in any other country. How does the left explain this? Why would people want to come to a country they loathe? Why don’t people want to live in Sweden or France as much as they wish to live in America? Those are rich and free countries, too.
The answer is that most people know there is no country in the world more accepting of strangers as is America. After three generations, people who have emigrated to Germany or France or Sweden do not feel — and are not regarded as — fully German, French or Swedish. Yet, anyone of any color from any country is regarded as American the moment he or she identifies as one. The country that the left routinely calls “xenophobic” and “racist” is in fact the least racist and xenophobic country in the world.
Given that it is the left and the institutions it dominates — universities, media (other than talk radio in America) and unions — that hate America, two questions remain: Why does the left hate America, and does the American left, too, hate America?
The answer to the first question is that America and especially the most hated parts of America — conservatives, religious conservatives in particular — are the greatest obstacles to leftist dominance. American success refutes the socialist ideals of the left; American use of force to vanquish evil refutes the left’s pacifist tendencies; America is the last great country that believes in putting some murderers to death, something that is anathema to the left; when America is governed by conservatives, it uses the language of good and evil, language regarded by the left as “Manichean”; most Americans still believe in the Judeo-Christian value system, another target of the left because the left regards all religions as equally valid (or more to the point, equally foolish and dangerous) and regards God-based morality as the moral equivalent of alchemy.
It makes perfect sense that the left around the world loathes America. The final question, then, is whether this loathing of America is characteristic of the American left as well. The answer is that the American left hates the America that believes in American exceptionalism, is prepared to use force to fight what it deems as dangerous evil, affirms the Judeo-Christian value system, believes in the death penalty, supports male-female marriage, rejects big government, wants lower taxes, prefers free market to governmental solutions, etc. The American left, like the rest of the world’s left, loathes that America.
So what America does the American left love? That is for those on the left to answer. But given their beliefs that America was founded by racists and slaveholders, that it is an imperialist nation, that 35 million Americans go hungry, that it invades countries for corporate profits, and that it is largely racist and xenophobic, it is a fair question.
This is yet another great article by Dennis Prager that exposes the truth about the left. It’s like a breath of fresh air to see such moral clarity and courage to face evil and call it to task for its unjustified hatred and bias. I had to share it with the readers of this blog.
My view from South Korea is that people are very angry at the Bush administration over Iraq, but overall, people like the U.S. and American stuff. I have plenty of ESL students who want to visit (or even move to) America for all sorts of reasons, but they almost unanimously (Left and Right) hate Bush and his decisions.
This is an interesting article, but with one minor flaw — almost everything in it is wrong.
“One of the most widely held beliefs in the contemporary world — so widely held it is not disputed — is that, with few exceptions, the world hates America.”
No, the widely held belief is not that the world hates America, but that around the world the favorable perception of America has decreased. The author does not make a distinction between hatred and loss of favorable perception.
Loss of favorable perception is not disputed, because it is based on a number of different international polls, all of which converge to the same conclusion. Some of these polls have been done by the media. One international poll conducted over six years was done by the U.S. State Department. Another poll conducted over three years on the perception of America in Muslim countries important to the war on terror was done by the General Accounting Office. (I suppose in Prager’s view the State Department and General Accounting Office hate America. But unlike Prager, those organizations have to deal with reality.)
Interestingly, the author never mentions a single international poll, although a 10 second Google search reveals a number of them.
“But it is not true that the world hates America. It is the world’s left that hates America.”
Even correcting the above statement for the “hatred” error, it still isn’t correct. This is because the relevant polls didn’t just sample people on the political left. If someone could contact Prager and inform him of basic statistics and sampling technique, you’d be doing him a great favor.
“The French, for example, are regarded as particularly America-hating, but if this were so, how does one explain the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France? Sarkozy loves America and was known to love America when he ran for president.”
By extension, if a poll revealed that most people in France don’t like mustard on hot dogs, but Sarkozy does, then it turns out that the polls are wrong, and the French really do like mustard on hot dogs because Sarkozy does. Or — maybe Prager is wrong, and the French voted for Sarkozy for reasons other than his favorable impression of America.
“ . . . the American left hates the America that believes in American exceptionalism, is prepared to use force to fight what it deems as dangerous evil . . .”
How then does one explain anti-war conservatives such as Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell? Do they hate America too?
” . . . believes in the death penalty . . . ”
The last 30 years around 120 people on death row have been released and exonerated due to actual evidence of innocence. As a quick and dirty analysis, if you have around 4 exonerations per year, and 50 to 70 executions per year, exonerations make up around 6 to 8 percent of the cases. It seems to me that even conservatives might be concerned about that. Or maybe not. I guess Prager isn’t concerned, or maybe he’s never done any research on the issue.
Even in death penalty cases there can be bad police work, botched evidence collection, faulty eyewitness accounts, poor legal representation, and so on. In that context, what does it mean to “believe in” the death penalty? You’re always going to have a small percentage of wrongful convictions, but if you don’t kill those people there is at least a chance that the error can be corrected. But again, maybe the true conservative position is that it’s OK to execute some innocent people as long as most of the people executed are guilty. At this point I really don’t know what the conservative position is, or who is supposed to be a conservative.
Orthodox political philosophy: The most cogent commentary on approriate Orthodox thought on government I’ve seen. The political conclusions are fodder for the mill but read it and let the comments begin: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/carlton1.html
Michael, it is a good article, and I found the author’s following statements particularly refreshing:
and
Ron Paul seems to be a reasonable candidate: however, I listen to a decent amount of talk radio, and his supporters for some unknown reason tend to sound a bit fanatical, dare I say? It’s odd, as the candidate himself seems to be a bit more level-headed.
Michael writes: “The political conclusions are fodder for the mill but read it and let the comments begin . . . ”
Yes, Michael, thanks for posting the link. I read the article recently. It’s one of those articles that goes beyond left and right, that doesn’t make anyone happy. I’m going to hang back for a while and see what others have to say.
A few more such letters from members of other faith communities:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block88.html Jewish
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance127.html Protestant
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods83.html Catholic
BTW, I am not posting these as an advocate of Ron Paul but as a way of sparking honest discussion as to the activity of faith, particularly the Church and the Orthodox Christian faith in a pluralistic, constitutional republic.
For a little deeper reading try The Agony of the Church by St. Nicolai Velimirovic http://manybooks.net/titles/velimirovicn2020620206-8.html. A small excerpt to whet your appetite:
The Agony of the Church (1917)
by Nikolaj Velimirovic
The banishment of religion from Europe that Jim frequently lauds made “Christ—a banished beggar looking for a shelter, while in the royal and pharisaic palaces lived: Machiavelli, the atheist; Napoleon, the atheist; Marx, the atheist; and Nietsche, the atheist, imperially ruling Europe’s rulers.”
We all know of the untold millions who were butchered by the atheist fanatics who followed in the footsteps of gentlemen named. The atrocities of the religious wars of Europe pale in comparison.
BTW, I am not posting these as an advocate of Ron Paul but as a way of sparking honest discussion as to the activity of faith, particularly the Church and the Orthodox Christian faith in a pluralistic, constitutional republic.
That’s good – I don’t see much in Carlton’s article that could be described as you seem to above as “The most cogent commentary on approriate Orthodox thought on government I’ve seen.”
Carlton seems to suffer the common confusion of many, that libertarianism is somehow conservativism. While they have many points in common, they also diverge in critical areas.
Also, Carlton article has some good arguments, some of it is pure rhetoric. He says things like
“There is nothing conservative about an undeclared war against a country that has not threatened us. ”
Which of course “it” being Saddam Hussiens Iraq did on quite a number of occasions.
“There is nothing conservative about threatening other countries (Iran) with a pre-emptive nuclear strike. ”
And there is nothing conservative about waiting for New York to burn in a nuclear fire before we can be “conservative” and respond to real threats.
“There is nothing conservative about suspending or ignoring habeas corpus. ”
And there is nothing conservative about extending habeas corpus to foreign enemies and battlefield combatants.
“There is nothing conservative about warrantless searches. ”
And there is nothing conservative about characterizing the terrorist surveillance program as “warrantless searches” on American citizens.
Here Carlton simply repeats the tired rhetoric of the left, which resonates with certain libertarian instincts. Saying the libertarian Ron Paul is the only “traditional” republican in the race is just silly. He is right to characterize certain Bush policies as non-conservative, but he is wrong to turn around and claim certain libertarian positions as “conservative”.
While I would love to “return to constitutional principles”, I do not confuse libertarianism with the same, as Carlton does here.
I think Carlton is better when expounding the Faith…
I tend to agree with the Constitutional and polity commentary that Carleton extends without agreeing with the political conclusions. The Civil War, the Progressive era and the New Deal pretty well decimated the balance in the Constitution that was intended to be there. Carleton’s description of the current additude of the three branches I think is quite accurate, i.e, they ignore their own Constitutional responsibilities and seek to usurp the powers of the others.
In addition, Carleton raises the question as to what form of government is best suited to the freedom of the Church. While one can disagree with the libertarian leaning of his assertions, I think it is difficult to deny that the current approach by either Republicans or Democrats (inherently statist) will be good for the external freedom of the Church. Further Carlton’s criticism of symphonia, as brief as it is, has far reaching consequences for not only for how the Church interacts within a pluralistic, participatory political culture, but also perhaps for the polity of the Church herself, something we are forced to consider in the light of the OCA scandal.
I also find it interesting that Ron Paul is reaching out to specific faith communities and attempting to communicate with them in their own language and on the principals of each particular tradition. I don’t recall any such effort by any other politician before. Rather than just appealing to emotional “hot-button” issues, he seems to be attempting to bring forth the importance of religious faith in establishing and maintaining an ordered and just society within the context of the American tradition.