Monthly Archives: February 2003

European anti-Americanism

During a conference call of the we

were asked to say what we are doing to keep our spirits up during this

time of looming war. Most of my friends and colleagues reported practically

useful or spiritually worthy activities that they have embarked on recently

to bolster their spirits—ranging from playing music to rediscovering

grammar school friends to co-teaching a course with Noam Chomsky (literally). All

I could think of was our family decision this morning to follow the instructions

in the newspaper and buy plastic sheeting for an emergency shelter room.

(Unfortunately, all the sheeting is gone from local stores).

Although I probably should focus on the damage

that we may be about to do in the Middle East, my actual thoughts range

from fear for my family, to irritation at the way the Bush Administration

handles diplomacy, to equally profound irritation with the European

anti-War movement. Everyone’s instinct in a time of crisis is to use

it for pre-existing political ends, whether they want to bash American

culture or impose US power on the Middle East. Each group interprets everyone

else’s motives as narrowly selfish or self-indulgent. And all the parties

act so as to confirm the worst interpretations of their enemies.

European anti-Americanism

This blog is becoming interactive! My friend Lars Hasselblad Torres sent

me the following email, which I quote with his permission: "Hey peter,

scouted out your blog today, and noted your irritation

with European anti-war movement. Is it safe to say their anti-americanism,

or is it their tactics to get in the way of Bush policy? Anyway, thought

you might find ‘of

paradise and power: america and europe in the new world order‘ of

interest: robert kagan lays out a hobbesian vs. kantian mood form each."

Lars then followed up with a set of good references to the whole question

of US-European relations, including this link to the Foreign

Policy Association. To Lars’ list, I would add Timothy Garten Ash’s

good New York Review piece

that collects virulently anti-European comments by senior US officials.

These are at least as inflammatory and unjustified as the anti-American

comments that set me off.

I suppose my suspicions about European anti-Americanism were born a long

time ago, especially in graduate school in England. There’s a lot of bad

faith and scapegoating on the European left: a desire to attribute bad

things to the US when European countries are just as responsible. I also

think that people on the European left tend to attribute undesirable features

of American life to something intrinsic and cultural about us—for

instance, "American individualism"—when the causes of our

problems apply to them as well. Three examples:

  • I was in Britain when American teenagers started mass shootings in

    high schools. Universally, British pundits attributed these crimes to

    a profound sickness in US culture. I would have said that the "epidemic"

    of school shootings (which involved about 1 in every ten million students)

    was not a symptom of anything; it was a copy-cat phenemonon. Indeed,

    copy-cat school killers subsequently turned up in France, Scotland,

    and Germany.

  • European critics generally analyze vulgar popular culture as a reflection

    of American culture, although European and Japanese firms generate a

    considerable amount of it; the US also produces a mighty stream of high

    culture; and the demand for the worst products is global. So I think

    it’s largely irrelevant to interpret Hollywood and pop music as "American"

    phenomena.

  • Our social policy is more conservative than the norm in European,

    although the gap is not as big as Europeans tend to think. (They focus

    on the federal government and don’t realize that our states take 8.5

    percent of GNP in taxes and spend it on domestic programs. As a result,

    the government’s share of GNP is almost exactly the same—30 percent—in

    the US

    and in Sweden.) In any case, I do not believe that our social policy

    is more conservative because of American individualism or some other

    feature of our culture. We have a median

    family income of $62,228 (for 4-person families). At that level,

    people don’t believe that they will benefit from social spending, except

    to support retirement and local public education. Hence the solid support

    for Social Security and Medicare and local education. In Europe, median

    family incomes are lower—but rising. Hence the political center

    in Europe is gradually drifting right, and will not stop soon.

Which brings us to the current debate about Iraq. I think the French

and others are completely right that we should postpone an invasion and

try to strengthen the inspections. But to what extent is this difference

of opinion a result of a cultural gap between the Europeans (allegedly

"from Venus") and the Americans ("from Mars")? The

US has an offensive military capacity that the Europeans lack, singly

and collectively. So perhaps the US must play bad cop in order

to allow the Europeans to play good cop. Absent a military threat from

the US, there would be no inspections, and the Saddam regime would go

completely unchecked and unchallenged. This would be morally unacceptable

to the European left, especially if European companies continued to do

profitable business with Iraq. If this is right, then there are not different

cultures on either side of the Atlantic. Rather, the West is one culture;

it relies on a powerful military that happens to be headquartered in the

USA.

None of which excuses the ham-handed and sometimes offensive way in which

Rumsfeld and other Bushies handle diplomacy ….

the release of Civic Mission of Schools

Today was finally the big release of The

Civic Mission of Schools. (I can finally link to the text of this

report, which had been embargoed until today.) John Bridgeland, Advisor

to the President and Director of USA Freedom Corps, made a very nice speech

in formally "receiving" it for the press. About 150 people were

present for the lunch/launch, including Vartan Gregorian, who spoke eloquently,

and many authors and endorsers (and friends in the civic engagement world).

I thought it went very well—at any rate, I’m relieved that it’s done.

why apply for the Rhodes?

I tried to talk one of Maryland’s Rhodes Scholarship applicants from

last year into reapplying, because he came within a whisker of winning.

Since he’s primarily a scientist, it’s not necessarily in his interest

to go to Oxford. But he’s also something of an activist for deaf culture,

and the Rhodes could open doors for him later if he wanted to continue

advocacy work.

journalism and political theory

Most of my time is spent planning for the launch of our report on k-12

civic education, The Civic Mission of Schools. At a press conference

on Thursday, it will be "received" by John Bridgeland, Advisor

to the President and Director of USA Freedom Corps, in the presence of

the presidents of The Pew Charitable Trusts and Carnegie Corporation of

New York, and others. So there are millions of practical details to attend

to.

Meanwhile, my colleagues and I filed an interim report with the Kettering

Foundation, describing our progress on a project involving journalism

and political theory. We’re trying to figure out how each discipline

might learn from and benefit the other. As an experiment, two graduate

students (under the direction of a philosophy professor and a journalism

professor) are creating a Website presenting ideas from political theory

in a format useful to working journalists. The idea is to learn what kind

of philosophy would be practically relevant—and what journalists

should learn from philosophers. The students have decided to focus the

Website itself on war and democratic theory. The central issues to be

addressed are (1) the uneasy relationship between national security and

civil liberties in a democratic society; (2) freedom of information, and

especially press access to information in time of war; and (3) the implications

of a professional military for the health of a democracy.