International Opinions of the USA: Last week's Star Tribune editorial America The Arrogant damning the US for being too arrogant has spurred several responses such as the Hugh Parmer's, but so far I have not seen anyone get the real lesson to be learned here. No amount of charity work, free food, or pulling a continent out of the rubble of a world war is going to make the European intellectuals approve of the United States. The reason is that what actually makes them upset has nothing to do with our arrogance or lack of it. It has to do with our success (which they are endlessly envious of) and their own lack of impotence (which of course is mostly their own fault, though being socialists at hear they will never admit that).
The way to get some respect is not to apologize for our successes or to ask the experts in foreign affairs from Paris and Berlin for advice before we tie our shoes in the morning. It is to speak up about why and how we have become so successful and point out that it is the European intellectuals who should be apologizing for dragging the world into war twice in the past 100 years and demolishing the economic and social fiber of their countries through socialistic policies. High taxes, bureaucracies, and social paternalism might be explained by centuries of monarchy, but it's time for them to grow up and join the 21st century.
When the communists took control of countries during the cold war they would flood them with books by Marx, Lenin, and try to convince the locals that what they were up to was a good idea. When the United States invaded Afghanistan did it bring along thousands of copies of books by Paine, Madison, Locke, Bastiat, and Rand? Of course not. They tried to win hearts and minds by giving away food and apologizing for being there. That will work a little bit for the common folks who would have otherwise gone hungry, but that's not who determines the political course of any society, it's the educated heads of schools, governments, business, and the press. These are the people we invite to come to our universities...to study Marx and Lenin.
Anyone who is so arrogant as to assume the right to control the lives of others and steal their property should not be lecturing the United States about arrogance, they should be apologizing themselves and getting out of the way as we save their bacon...again.
5:03:36 PM 
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