Here is a review in the Asian Times of a book I’ve not heard about. The book is Anti-Americanism by Jean-Francois Revel, French-English translation by Diarmid Cammell and is reviewed by John Parker.
I need to locate this one, although I think it might make me mad to read it. Revel actually spent time in the US, a modern Alexis de Toqueville, and draws his conclusions of American values from his conversations with real people. The Frenchman takes no prisoners in his text:
The most notable characteristic of Anti-Americanism, as a text, is the blistering, take-no-prisoners quality of its prose. Even those diametrically opposed to Revel’s views would be forced to acknowledge his skills as a pugnacious rhetorician who does not eschew sarcasm as a weapon.
A few examples will suffice: referring to anti-war banners that proclaimed “No to terrorism. No to war”, Revel scoffs that this “is about as intelligent as ‘No to illness. No to medicine’.” Responding to the indictment of the United States as a “materialistic civilization”, he says: “Everyone knows that the purest unselfishness reigns in Africa and Asia, especially in the Muslim nations, and that the universal corruption that is ravaging them is the expression of a high spirituality.”
For anyone in this country beginning to feel we are on the wrong path, and that our critics around the world just might be right, reading this review is important. Whether the book can hold your attention as well as the review is yet to be seen. But the review itself is a revealing discourse. And any self-flagellating Americans might pay attention to some lines like these:
…countless commentators have parroted the cliche that the “war on terrorism” is unwinnable, but how many have noted the obvious, undeniable corollary that Osama bin Laden’s self-declared war on the United States is equally unwinnable?
Therein lies another exquisite irony: the costs of anti-Americanism will be borne not by Americans, but by others. And their numbers are vast: Cubans, North Koreans, Zimbabweans, and countless others suffer and starve under their respective tyrannies because the democratic world’s chattering classes, obsessed with denouncing the United States, can’t be bothered with holding their criminal regimes to account. Meanwhile, in Iraq, fascist rabble, with no discernible political program save a pledge to kill more Americans, try desperately to extinguish the slightest hope of democracy, economic growth, and stability for that long-suffering land; but the world, instead of helping to beat back the wolves at the door, basks in anti-American schadenfreude. How countless are the political problems, cultural pathologies, and humanitarian disasters that fester unnoticed, all over the globe, as the anti-American cult, wallowing in ecstatic bigotry, desperately scrutinizes every utterance of the Bush administration for new critical fodder.
The review is an essay in itself. Hit the link, copy and paste the text into something you can read at leisure. And bask in the fact that there are folks out there who understand Americans often better than we understand ourselves.