It's 3:00 a.m. here in the Lone Star State, but, unfortunately, the election is still up in the air. I decided to wander around the web a bit to read what the British papers are saying.
Here's a provocative piece by Janet Daly, a regular writer for The Daily Telegraph. Since Daly is actually an American, she sometimes offers insights to her British readers that they're unlikely to get from British journalists.
She reminds us that many Europeans loathed Bush long before the war in Iraq, and she offers an very unflattering reason for this hatred:
He is hated because he is the embodiment of everything that the United States is, and Europe is not: not just enormously powerful, militarily and economically, but brashly confident and fervently patriotic. Where Europe is steeped in historical guilt and self-loathing - so immersed in its own unforgivable past that it is trying to fashion a constitution that actually prohibits national pride - America is profoundly proud of the success of its own miraculous achievement.What it has succeeded in doing is cracking the great dilemma of modern history: how can disparate and ethnically diverse people live together? How can people of differing and deeply felt religious convictions survive, with their beliefs intact, in a single unified country - evangelical Protestants such as Mr Bush alongside practising Catholics with Jewish roots such as Mr Kerry - without their cities turning into Belfast or Beirut?
The answer lies not in the post-religious, anti-clerical mania of the European Union which has just rejected a commissioner for espousing mainstream Catholic principles, but in that patriotism so despised by European elites. It is the unifying force of national self-belief with all those ridiculed school rituals - pledging allegiance to the flag, reciting the preamble to the Constitution - that makes America whole and at one with itself.
Bush is the personification of that unashamed America and that is why Europe cannot bear the sight of him.
Even readers of The Daily Telegraph, a conservative bunch on the whole, will find this hard to swallow, as do I to some extent. After all, I'm no Bush admirer, but I'm an unashamed patriot.
The chief source of my opposition to Bush stems from my position on his policies, which is that they are … Oh, hell, let's leave all of that partisanship aside for now. I've blogged my disagreement with Bush & Co. for several months now. There's no need to repeat my objections in this particular post. If Kerry wins, then they won't matter. If Bush wins, then you'll have plenty of opportunities to re-acquaint yourselves with them during the next four years.
Daly has a point, though. The overwhelming majority of Americans have a regard for their country that I think is largely missing in Europe, and is certainly lacking in the European media. Here's how I would illustrate the difference.
I go to performances of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra on a regular basis. FWSO concerts begin as all classical concerts do: The conductor comes onstage, takes his bow, and steps onto the podium. But then he leads the orchestra in playing the national anthem. This is considered perfectly normal. No one thinks it odd.
Does something similar happen very often at classical concerts anywhere in Europe? I doubt it. Maybe it does, of course. I admit that my experience is limited, and so I can't say for sure. But doesn't it seem so typically American?
I should add in closing that the FWSO conductor is named Miguel Harth-Bedoya. He's from Peru. Everybody in Fort Worth loves him.
