Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

America as katestrophenhaft

James Ceasar writes a long and very good article entitled, "A genealogy of anti-Americanism," in the current issue of The Public Interest. This is a serious piece, worth consideration and much reflection. Ceasar says: "Anti-Americanism rests on the singular idea that something associated with the United States, something at the core of American life, is deeply wrong and threatening to the rest of the world." He then traces five major layers or strata regarding the concept of America, including, degeneracy and monstrocity, rationalistic illusions, racial impurity, technology, soullessnss and rampant consumerism.

Just a point: Heidegger says Americanism is "the still unfolding and not yet full or completed essence of the emerging monmstrousness of modern times." America is katestrophenhaft, the site of catastrophe. Read it all and weep for what used to be called the West, and now must be called America. Yet, Ceasar is not without hope.    

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I agree with Caesar that this bout of anti-Americanism is probably rooted right at the heart of the American founding. But I want to go further as to point the heart to the founding principles that the Claremont Institute promotes as anti-Americanism’s target: these principles are exactly what European anti-Americans explicitly dislike. We can see that as America slowly goes back to some of its founding principles (though I agree that it is too little and I think the USA will probably never completely get back to all its founding principles), we see opposition to the idea of America per se increases in other countries.

To illustrate my last point on a numerical scale, imagine American founding principles at 100 while European (EU) ideals at zero. Europe today is drifting towards 0 but is at 12 or 13, general Europeans don’t care about it, the Eurocrats are working to move Europe to zero, continental European conservatives outside Franco-Germany zone want something like 15, and British conservatives want the score to be 25. In contrast, America in Jimmy Carter’s time was at 40 but today is at 50, we (American conservatives and foreigners who love America’s founding principles) want America to get back to 100 but at least get to above 85, and the average voters in America want something like 60. Europeans dislike America precisely because on this scale the USA already scores too high.

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