The American Revolution was by no means a universally embraced dream, way back in its infancy in the mid-late 1700s. By John Adams’ estimation, preferences were divided somewhat equally between “loyalists, fence-sitters, and patriots.” The loyalists, also dubbed Tories, were loyal to the Crown and often worked in opposition to the Revolution. A number left America after the war’s end, decamping for Europe, Canada, or other British holdings in the New World.
America’s revolution and independence has been a very Good Thing for the world, ushering in a then-radical form of government that served as the blueprint for the future, and producing the greatest nation in the world’s history. Over the course of the last 3/4 century, America’s strength and might shaped the entire world, and in particular stood as a protector of the European states that she eschewed in her Revolution and new form of limited government.
Yet, despite all this, despite the fact that America saved Europe’s bacon out many times, despite the fact that Pax Americana helped the European states build what they have today, and despite the fact that America’s been a bigger economic powerhouse, Europeans retain an unshakeable sense of superiority over their boorish, unwashed American cousins.
That attitude is shared by many of America’s own cultural and political elite. Indeed, even today, some lament the outcome of the Revolution, contemplating that “We could have been Canada.” They look longingly on the newly elected, pretty-boy Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with a giant sigh of relief at France and Emmanuel Macron’s victory over Marine Le Pen, and with misty-eyed “what might have been” at the EU itself.
They recoil in horror at the America-First talk coming out of Trump and out of the American heartland that elected him. As columnist Victor Davis Hanson note, they love “globalization.” This actually means they love the European model over the American model, despite the latter’s greater success and despite the latter’s being the very raison d’être for arising and continuing. This actually means they love the haughty, vaguely-nationalist (as in our way’s the better way) anti-nationalism that the European elite embrace in their building and perpetuation of the European Union. They also love globalism’s evil cousin, multiculturalism, which proclaims that there are no better or worse cultures, just different ones. Tell that to the starving citizens of Venezuela, or gays and women in Islamic nations, or to those suffering under the rampant corruption in sub-Saharan Africa, or to the couple hundred million who’ve died due to various forms of socialism and communism.
Trump is the epitome, in the Europeans and the modern-day American Tories’ eyes, of the unwashed American boor, so their deep-seated prejudices are irresistibly bubbling to the fore. And, right on cue, the collective gasps, vapors, and cries of outrage over Trump’s recent comments and behavior at NATO.
These Tories only like America’s system of government when it is not being true to itself, when it seeks to emulate elements of those European systems that they fetishize. So, it was great when Obama derided Americans who liked the American way better than the European way, and when he sought to move the nation’s system in that direction, and it’s terrible that President Trump even exists.
And, they align with the European and Europe-style leaders they so admire when those leaders sniff at that epitome of American boorishness, Donald Trump.
I’m not one for jingoistic “America First” patriotism, or excusing our government’s failings, but I believe that the bedrock of our system is the better one, and that the American Constitution is humanity’s greatest achievement in governance. I believe that American individualism and love of liberty is a better way than what the rest of the world has produced. And, I certainly don’t believe that the Europhilia I’ve described here is warranted or justified.
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