DANIEL HANNAN: AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM DERIVES FROM OUTPERFORMING RIVALS-NOT APOLOGIZING TO THEM
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/american-exceptionalism-derives-from-outperforming-rivals-not-apologizing-to-them
If you asked me what it is that makes America respected around the world, I might come up with a short list like this one off the top of my head:
1. Your living standards. The real test of your popularity is the length of the queue to get into your country as compared to the queue of those trying to get out. There’s a reason Mexican border guards aren’t patrolling their frontier against gringo illegals.
2. Your television and popular culture. Pretty much the whole world watches “The Simpsons,” “Breaking Bad” and the rest. This evinces some level of global ease with American values.
3. Your enterprise. I remember an Islamist once saying “We want your television sets, not your television programs”. He couldn’t see why the two things came as a package.
4. Your freedom. There is nowhere else on the planet where people can so confidently expect to be unharassed by the authorities.
5. Two world wars. After defeating the Kaiser, America sponsored the creation of several new nation-states from no other motive than altruism. After defeating the Axis, it went further, rebuilding and reforming the countries it had beaten. Look at modern Germany and Japan. I’d say they represent two pretty massive American achievements.
6. The Cold War, by which you liberated hundreds of millions of people from Communism, which must be considered mathematically the most murderous ideology in human history.
There are many other things I might include on such a list of what makes America respected around the world – your optimism, perhaps, and your greatness of heart. But do you know what it would never even occur to me to include – not in a million years? The fact that your country is Barack Obama’s birthplace and at one point saw fit to elevate him to high office.
That should really go without saying, but the 44th president appears to have convinced himself that he, personally, has rescued the reputation of the republic.
“People don’t remember,” he said last week, “but when I came into office, the United States in world opinion ranked below China and just barely above Russia.”
Now, without wanting to get all pompous about it, wasn’t this precisely the kind of attitude that the system was designed to constrain? Isn’t it why the United States has the separation of powers and term limits and states’ rights and all that jazz?
The authors of the U.S. Constitution had been shaped by their battle against a monarchy that they believed (wrongly as it turned out) was becoming autocratic. They were determined to ensure that no future leader would get away with thinking that he was bigger than the system itself. And, by and large, they succeeded. Even the power-hungry Franklin Roosevelt was rebuffed when he overreached by trying to pack the Supreme Court. But FDR never presumed to tell his countrymen that their standing in the world depended on him personally.
As President Obama might put it – he likes to chide Americans for their weakness at foreign languages – “l’état c’est moi.”
It’s not just that this attitude is at odds with American values. It’s that it’s plain wrong. Shortly after the President made his immodest remarks, this newspaper reported that his approval rating was lower than George W. Bush’s.
Now I have plenty of criticisms of the younger Bush: I disliked his readiness to expand federal power and spending, and I was one of those lonely conservatives who opposed the Iraq invasion. But be honest. Can you imagine Putin and Assad thumbing their noses at the West had the amiable Texan been in charge?
Did your mom ever tell you that, in order to be respected, you sometimes have to do things differently from the other kids? Few of us listen at the time, but they have a point, those moms. Ronald Reagan, like the George W, was prepared to scandalize polite opinion in foreign capitals, but he got the job done, beating the Soviets. President Obama, by contrast, began his presidency by apologizing for American “arrogance”, and spent the following seven years aligning his policy with Europe’s. Result? American prestige has tumbled, and gangs of militiamen from Mosul to Mariupol happily challenge American power.
If you want the respect of your rivals, don’t mimic them; outperform them. They’ll like you well enough after you’ve beaten them. Just ask the Japanese.
A version of this piece previously appeared on http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/
Daniel Hannan is a British writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the EU is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free. He is the winner of the Bastiat Award for online journalism
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