Everyone has an opinion as to why the world hates the United States. I have one. But today I read the most convincing article on the topic yet, and it says a great deal about us as a people. Jennifer Harper of The Washington Times has this to say in her article Americans not ruffled by world’s contempt:
The rest of the world often entertains itself being annoyed with the United States. The opinion polls often show it.
But that’s nothing like American opinion of the global village. The inevitable experts say American scorn for foreign contempt is rooted in a fierce but amenable independence and an inner mettle.
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Though there was hubbub recently over an American boycott of French products — “freedom fries” and all that — one poll offers a reality check: In a Gallup/CNN/USA Today survey of 1,001 persons in late April, 67 percent said they don’t even buy French products in the first place.
There also appears to be some irony: U.S. foreign policy, pop culture and attitude irk the world. But the world still waits at the door.
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“The current stereotype of Europeans in easily summarized,” wrote Timothy Garton Ash in February. “Europeans are wimps. They are weak, petulant, hypocritical, disunited, sometimes anti-Semitic and often anti-American appeasers … their values and their spines have dissolved in a lukewarm bath of multilateral, transnational, secular and postmodern fudge.”
Link via The Intellectual Activist.
