Major differences between the European and American minds. With my silly comments!

[Epoetker]

http://www.nationalreview.com/derbys...hire031903.asp

They don't understand. — How a-n-g-r-y we are. It was our proud buildings that were brought down on 9/11. It was our office workers, airplane passengers, firemen and cops who got killed. Those attacks were the worst foreign assaults on American soil since the founding of the republic. We are mad as hell, and we have every right to be. It didn't help a bit that we heard stories from all over the world of people rejoicing in our loss and grief, standing up and cheering, dancing in the streets, writing smug editorial pieces in the London Review of Books to the effect that we had it coming. Those things just spread our anger wider, from the monsters who attacked us to the fools who try to give them moral credibility.

Comment: And the thing is, you really haven't seen us in true blind rage mode yet...

We don't understand — How much they resent our wealth and power. Fourteen years after the end of the Cold War, the sheer scale of our supremacy in the world has not really sunk in to our consciousness yet.

Our military is better funded, better equipped, and more awesome by an order of magnitude than any other. Even before 9/11, we accounted for over 36 percent of the world's military expenditure. The next in rank, Russia, had less than six percent.

Our economy makes everyone else's look puny — we currently have 43 percent of the world's economic production. Twenty years ago we fretted about rising competitors like Japan, a united Europe, Asian tigers, China. Now Japan is a busted flush, Europe is choking on red tape, the tigers are trending Japan-wards, and China is facing a major systemic crisis. We stand supreme.

Our culture is omnipresent: peasant lads in Nepal wear NBA T-shirts, teenage girls in Sudan hum the Titanic theme, bankers in Buenos Aires meet at Starbucks.

To the rest of the world, we look like a 200-foot giant. Immense wealth and power may be respected, are occasionally admired, will sometimes be feared, but they are never loved.

"But don't they remember how we saved their bacon twice in the 20th century?" Sure they remember. Gratitude, however, is an emotion with a short half-life. If you save me from drowning, I shall be intensely grateful to you for days and weeks afterwards. Months and even years later, I may still regard you with a warm appreciation. If, however, you are still reminding me of the good deed 50 years on, I shall find it irritating. That is not fair at all, but it's human nature. "I did for you what you could not do for yourself" contains, if you look at it closely, an implied comment about my own abilities.

No theologically parallel comments here.

They don't understand — Our deep idealism. All right, Americans say, we are a giant. Are we not a kindly giant, though? Was there ever a giant with such a will to do good? Can you imagine what a world dominated by Russia would be like? Or China? (If you can't, ask a Hungarian, or a Tibetan.) We are proud of the great good we have done in the world — Lend-Lease, victory over fascism and communism, the Marshall Plan, and all the liberating and wealth-encouraging institutions we have helped fund and support — the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, and, yes, in theory at least, the U.N. Sure, some of those good deeds benefited us, too. That is the "self-interest" in "enlightened self-interest." Will someone please note the other half of the phrase? Uniquely among all the Top Dog nations that the world has ever had, we do not believe that the international order is a zero-sum game, that what is good for us will be bad for you.

Yeah, this is something that I get pissed at too. I WANT stable, democratic nations to have working militaries and dynamic economies. Even France, for crying out loud.

Even when we have blundered, it has been with good intentions. France fought in Vietnam to preserve her imperial standing and keep her planters in business; we fought in Vietnam to hold the free world's line against communist dictatorship. Every pronouncement from our leaders about possible war with Iraq comes with a rider that we shall do our utmost to avoid harming civilians. When did any other nation prepare for a military expedition with such oft-repeated declarations? When? The Chinese going into Vietnam in 1979? The Russians going into Chechnya in 1994? The French in Algeria? Iraq attacking Iran? The Libyans in Chad? When? When?

None I've heard tell of...

We don't understand — Their cynicism. Two stories.

Around 1991 I was in a movie theater in London's Leicester Square (which is to say, a tony movie theater in the heart of London) watching Tom Selleck in Three Men and a Little Lady. Near the end of the movie, Tom looks into the eyes of his leading lady and says the words she's been longing to hear: "I love you." The London audience erupted in hoots of laughter. Can you believe it? Americans really go for that sappy stuff! What rubes they are!

In China a year and a half ago, I was talking to one of my Chinese relatives about the United States Constitution. He waved away the Constitution with a laugh. "Oh, that's all nonsense. it's just a piece of paper. Doesn't mean anything."

There is an innocence, an earnestness about Americans that, all too often, foreigners just don't get. If we love someone, we look into her eyes and say so. We take our Constitution seriously. One way and another, we passed through most of the great disillusioning experiences of the 20th century, from the Great War to the sexual revolution, with our illusions pretty much intact. Outside the intellectual classes, irony doesn't come easily to Americans. Europeans who come to live in the U.S. find that they have to perform major adjustments to their sense of humor to avoid giving offense to the literal-minded inhabitants of this country.

Americans have had no prolonged education in cynicism. We have never been expected to look up to rulers who claim to be appointed "by the grace of God," yet whose failings are all too obviously human. We have never had to endure the indignity of living in a "people's republic" in which the actual people count for nothing, under a "constitution" whose sole purpose is to provide a fig leaf of legitimacy to naked, brutish power.

I'm pretty sure Iraq has a constitution somewhere...

They don't understand — Our patriotism. There are styles of patriotism. Old ethno-nations like France, Poland or China tend to assume that patriotism is bred in the bone, and does not need to be shown or expressed except at times of dire national emergency. The flamboyant, everyday patriotism of Americans is unsettling to them, and looks like bumptiousness covering insecurity. There is perhaps no other country in the world in which, on a day that is not a national holiday, you can walk down a residential street and see flags flying from the doorposts. I have been hunting around on the web for statistics on flag ownership — how many citizens, country by country, actually own a copy of their country's flag. Couldn't find those statistics, but I feel sure the U.S.A. easily ranks number one in this table, too; and I bet that was true even before 9/11. I lived more than twenty years in Britain, and I can't recall a single instance of any British person I knew owning a British flag.

Man. Not even at soccer-ah, sorry, football matches?

We don't understand — Their patriotism. French people, Germans, Russians, even Mexicans, nurse deep attachments to their history, their customs, their language and cuisine, their traditions, the great deeds of their ancestors. We may look down at these people's political incompetence: at France, which has been through five republics, two empires and two kingdoms in the lifetime of our own single Constitution, at the Russians, who submitted to be the slaves of amoral despots for 70 years, at the Germans, who surrendered their liberties to a psychopath with a comic-opera mustache and stood by obediently while he massacred millions of their unarmed fellow-citizens.

Still we should not forget that when you and your ancestors have lived in the same place for a thousand years, speaking the same language and eating the same food, practicing the same religious observances and quoting the same poets, gazing out over the same rivers and hills, you do not take kindly to the intrusions of a 200-year-old upstart nation, half of whose people do not seem even to be able to describe themselves as "American" without sticking something hyphenated in front of the word.

[Epoetker]

They don't understand — The reverence in which we hold our institutions. We scoff at our politicians, like everyone else in the world, but the institutions they represent are taken very seriously indeed. Shortly after 9/11, on this site, I offered a rude speculation about how Bill Clinton might have reacted to the crisis. I was flooded with indignant e-mail from NRO readers — Clinton-haters all, probably — asking me who the hell I thought I was, insulting the presidency at such a time. Not Clinton — they couldn't have cared less about him — but the presidency. The idea that the institutions of national governance are merely a racket, a cover for the machinations of a ruling class, is very widespread around the world. It occurs to every Chinese person, every Saudi, every Nigerian, every Russian, at least once a day. Even Frenchmen and Italians find themselves thinking it once a week or so. To Americans — except for some small cliques of race agitators and Europeanized intellectuals — it is utterly alien.

Except to those who see the Jews sucking away their precious bodily fluids.

e don't understand — How badly George W. Bush travels. Never having been schooled in the fast repartee of a parliamentary debating chamber, Bush seems slow and inarticulate in response. Coming from the openly confessional tradition of Southern Christianity, he seems to foreigners to be religiose rather than religious. Having spent most of his life in a region with a strong sense of identity, he speaks his local dialect unselfconsciously, which makes him sound like a bumpkin to other English-speakers (and even to some Americans). Pronouncing "nuclear" as "noo-koo-luh" tells you nothing more about the man than that he comes from Texas and doesn't care who knows it. It is no more reprehensible than my pronouncing "schedule" with a "sh" instead of a "sk," and it is very unfair of non-Texans to snigger at it. They do, though, and I am not sure they are wrong to do so, bearing in mind what terrible responsibilities lie behind that word "nuclear."

Yeah, America's pretty much led by people who don't throw dinner parties that often.

They don't understand — The vitality of our political life. The tremendous events of 1775-1787 fired off a national conversation that is still in full flood today. Does the Second Amendment imply an individualright to own firearms? What exactly does "subject to the jurisdiction of" mean, in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment? How can we square one state's approval of homosexual marriage with the "full faith and credit" of the Constitution's Article IV, Section 1? These things are the stuff of everyday conversation and endless public debate. American political culture has a vigor and breadth unknown elsewhere. The political life of other countries, when you go to them, seems dull and tame.

Loving this, at least.

We don't understand — The narrowness of viewpoint expressed in their media. Centuries of state-sanctioned priesthoods and despotic bureaucracy have left other nations with a deferential attitude to bookish pontificators that America just does not know. As much as we complain of the leftist bias in our media, we can hardly imagine the situation in Britain, where the BBC — far the most important source of news and comment for most people — is staffed entirely by members of the hard-Left lumpen-intelligentsia, people who, to my certain knowledge (I am friends with some of them) were admirers of the Soviet Union down to the hour of its collapse. In France and Germany things are even worse. There is essentially no conservative movement in these countries, nor in any country but the U.S. There are no Second Amendment lobbies, no Club for Growth, no anti-abortion crusaders, no Christian Coalition, no Rush Limbaugh, no Sean Hannity. (I do not say these things don't exist in Britain, France, or Germany. I do say that they have no political influence whatsoever.)

Because of the lack of alternative voices, the effect of political correctness on these countries has been far more dire than in the U.S. In England last November, a journalist was locked up in jail for telling a pro-fox-hunting rally that country people should have the same rights as black people, Muslims, and homosexuals.

Unrestrained by any constitutional protection for free speech, the ruling elites in these countries are wielding p.c. as a club to smash all dissent from approved state doctrines, all resistance to state schemes of social engineering. No voices are heard in Europe now but the voices of the Leftist clerisy who control all the media outlets. These people are all anti-American. (In France and Italy, they are not infrequently actual Communist-party members — yes, Communism is alive and well in Europe.) It is not surprising that the ordinary people of these countries, bathed as they are in this flood of lies from morning till night, are suspicious of us. And this is only to speak of nations that have some decently long tradition of consensual democracy. Russia? China? Turkey? Fugeddaboutit

It is probably thus that twinked-out liberals like Eireann can call themselves "moderate"-they very well may be, compared to those at home.

[flipper]

Our economy makes everyone else's look puny — we currently have 43 percent of the world's economic production.

Manufacturing? Reeeeeeally?

...Twenty years ago we fretted about rising competitors like Japan, a united Europe, Asian tigers, China. Now Japan is a busted flush, Europe is choking on red tape, the tigers are trending Japan-wards, and China is facing a major systemic crisis. We stand supreme.

For now. And the Chinese do have their problems. However, you should look at the number of advanced science degrees currently getting handed out in the US these days compared to 10 years ago, and look at the proportions of your young folk going on to study science at Uni, or planning to.

Then look at where all the microprocessor manufacturing is going on. Check out what fab development and R&D plans are there are going on for semiconductor tech in the PRC.

In 40 years, I think you'll be surprised by what happened.

[wienerdog]

Having lived in Europe, I hereby proclaim the real difference between Europeans and Americans (ahem):

Americans think 100 years is a long time.
Europeans think 100 miles is a long way.

[Solly]

Today @ 07:19 AM
wienerdog:

Having lived in Europe, I hereby proclaim the real difference between Europeans and Americans (ahem):

Americans think 100 years is a long time.
Europeans think 100 miles is a long way.

[Solly]

Epoetker, if the above is a prsentation of your own views as well, then it just goes to show one thing:

Americans don't understand Europeans, or anybody else in the world for that matter.

[Ryokan]

In forty years Flipper, wouldn't be surprised to see China having an economy to compete with ours. Considering the fact its been a long time since I have gone to a nonimmigrant doctor, though, I think brain drain will keep the third world out of the game :(

[Epoetker]

Exactly, Ryokan. America appeals to those educated in other countries precisely because of its freedom. It's almost a given that those who want to work WILL find work here. Were it not for the multivariate barriers to economic activity that the rest of the civilized world puts up toward peaceful work, we might have something to compete with. We don't, and I find that horribly sad. Those advanced degrees in other countries might be more telling if they didn't come in concert with lots of English classes-a sure sign of future brain drain.

[flipper]

Epoetker and Ryokan:

A lot of these people stay in the US. But a lot more go back home with their newfound skills. In fact, the PRC have a scholarship program for their brightest students to go study in the West. They are expected to keep a very high grade average, and I believe that most of them (don't have any figures) do go back.

Furthermore, the more outside talent you port into your universities, national labs, and corporations, the more intellectual property you risk losing to other countries.

But anyway, we shall see. I think it's highly risky to rely on a constant stream of immigrants to keep yourselves on top of the pile (yes, yes, I know it is the american way, but times are changing - don't you see that?).

[Epoetker]

A lot of these people stay in the US. But a lot more go back home with their newfound skills. In fact, the PRC have a scholarship program for their brightest students to go study in the West. They are expected to keep a very high grade average, and I believe that most of them (don't have any figures) do go back.

Furthermore, the more outside talent you port into your universities, national labs, and corporations, the more intellectual property you risk losing to other countries.

I might dispute the China contention, but I'll let it slide for now. Indeed, the latest big ol' wargame I'm playing has the three major world military powers as the US, China, and the "Global Liberation Army"(spiritual al Qaeda successor.) Seems quite astute to me. And, I will reiterate:

Not having comperable peaceful competition is BAD for the American work ethic and general intelligence. I WANT good trading partners, which is why I WANT China to democratize in addition to capitalizing-best to be open if you're also powerful. As it currently stands, we would be hurt badly by a China embargo; China would fall into complete chaos by a US embargo.

But anyway, we shall see. I think it's highly risky to rely on a constant stream of immigrants to keep yourselves on top of the pile (yes, yes, I know it is the american way, but times are changing - don't you see that?).

It's not risky if you can teach these immigrants American philosophy and values-indeed, that's all we ask for those who wish to BE Americans. If the future is taupe, so shall it be here. It doesn't matter so much anyway-our birthrate is the only one among Western nations that's near replacement levels. Not so elsewhere. The worst destructive sort of immigration is the type Europe is undergoing-millions of immigrants from North Africa and the Islamic world who support the massive welfare states through working all of the low-paying jobs and cling much more tightly to their previous national identity than their adopted ones. .(Y'know, what some tend to accuse the American Jews of doing.) And quite often find identity in the most extreme forms of Islam.

[Epoetker]

And flipper, you might what to consider this rather disturbing aspect of China before you go assume that gigantic population = guaranteed superpower.

http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen032003.asp

Wars have never reached the level of mass killing that diseases have achieved, and the new viral pneumonia spreading throughout the world from its incubator in China may yet do more damage than the terrorists and the war against terror. But even if it doesn't, we've learned some things about the Chinese government that should give our political and business leaders plenty of food for thought.

It is widely reported that the Chinese kept the story secret from the rest of the world. Why? Most seem to think it's because it's their nature to suppress bad news (remember that they still deny there was a massacre in Tiananmen Square). No matter that an epidemic in China could produce millions of deaths at home, and even more overseas. It was more important to keep the information from their own people.

I'm not so sure that the authorities were keeping the information from the people. It may well be that the people were keeping it from the authorities.

There is an unusual relationship between the government of the People's Republic of China and its people, one which we do not begin to fully comprehend. We don't comprehend it because we don't know very much about recent Chinese history, and even those few of us who study it fail to grant it the great importance it has in contemporary China.

Not very long ago — within the past five years, let's say — an American businessman of my acquaintance, a leading figure in the health-care field, was approached by an authoritative official of the Chinese government with a truly fabulous offer. How would the American like to set up a nationwide network of clinics, under his own name and with clear American identification? He would provide the medicine, the staff, the doctors, the technology. The Chinese would provide the money, the land, the labor force to build the clinics, and guarantee a substantial profit for at least a decade.

The American was impressed; who wouldn't be? And of course he was curious. Why were they being so generous?

The answer helps understand why it took so long for the Chinese to fess up to the existence of the new Viral pneumonia. The Chinese official put it this way: "we are having a terrible time getting people to see doctors, even for routine physical checkups. And this is because of an event that took place back in the late 1940s, following Mao's revolution. At that time, the government promised to eradicate venereal disease in China. And it did. Everyone was forced to undergo an examination by a certified doctor. And anyone with venereal disease was executed. Ever since, most Chinese stayed far away from medical doctors."

So the current regime, which would like to improve the health of the population, thought that it might be possible to get the people to a doctor if that doctor were clearly separate from the government. Indeed, as far removed from Chinese officialdom as one could imagine: an American doctor in an American clinic that guaranteed utter privacy.

That's quite a confession by the Chinese government, isn't it? In essence, the Chinese official told the American that there was no way a Chinese citizen would see a doctor, because of fear that the doctor would kill him. A sick Chinese might fear death from the disease, but that was only a possibility, not a certainty, whereas going to the doctor was certain death.

Given this background, the most surprising part of the story about the new pneumonia is that the government found out within a few months. It would be interesting to know just how they discovered it (my own guess is that someone under their control — maybe a prisoner? — contracted the disease, and could not escape medical treatment), and it's most encouraging that they informed other governments.

There are many things in this world that we never imagined, and you can find most of them in China. Just remember, if it's a one-in-a-million possibility, there are more than thousand of them in the People's Republic.

OT: My quality points are through the roof of the hizzouse...

[Ryokan]

I don't trust west wood to predict the future for me.

And times may be a changing, but what is changing is the entire idea of a nation, or a national economy. Immigration is on the up around the world, and I think it is our best hope to overcome our differences. And many Chinese do go back to the PRC, but many don't. And China has a long, hard road to go before they become our equals. By the time they get there, we may be on the same team.

[johnransom]

Yesterday @ 01:19 AM here
wienerdog:

Having lived in Europe, I hereby proclaim the real difference between Europeans and Americans (ahem):

Americans think 100 years is a long time.
Europeans think 100 miles is a long way.

Having been both a European and an American, I say the real difference is:

Americans think about what they can do in the next 100 years.
Europeans think things stopped happening 100 years ago.

[johnransom]

Yesterday @ 02:02 AM here
Solly:

Epoetker, if the above is a prsentation of your own views as well, then it just goes to show one thing:

Americans don't understand Europeans, or anybody else in the world for that matter.

On the contrary, Americans do understand everybody else because at one time or another we were everybody else.

[Epoetker]