Having spent time online with a number of Americans, I know that there are three kinds of writing about anti-Americanism: the kind mostly by Americans, which I have little time to listen to because it’s usually rather decontextualized and whiney; the kind which is simply foreigners justifying anti-Americanism, which is boring as hell; and, finally, the kind that’s usually (though not always) by non-Americans, which is often interesting because it’s often a criticism of blind anti-Americanism which nonetheless still manages not to completely embrace pro-Americanism, or which celebrates non-American culture as well.
As a Canadian, that being a person from a culture the center of which seems to me to be focused on a negation of Americanness (“We’re better than them! We’re nicer than them! We are NOT AMERICANS!” being what I think is the secret message of most Canadian writing about Canadianness…), I tend to have a slightly anti-American knee-jerk reaction. While I have really reined it in by spending time with quite intelligent Americans, most notably my friend John Wendel, I can always use a foreign perspective on things. And here is one: it’s a very interesting article in the latest New Criterion by a French philosopher/critic named Jean-Francois Revel, called The anti-American obsession.
The heart of his argument is stated right in the beginning:
Cultural diversity?has replaced