Giorgio,

Those are interesting and welcome comments from a European perspective. As a Canadian I have a similar mixed reaction, albeit also from a broadly quite pro-American place.

There are some elements of American life that always strike me as less bothersome than they do Europeans. Just as I share some American concerns about the European way and prefer my country not follow it. There is a case to be made that there really is a "North American" society and perspective. On the other hand, I must admit my attachment to elements of Canadian society not popular on this site. I like single payer, mainly because it frees me not only from spending after-tax dollars but also from what appears to be a positively crushing weight of corporate and government bureaucracy explicitly designed to frustrate me. It seems to me I even have more liberty to choose my primary care doctor. That said, I recognize that it imposes huge time delays that are merely annoying [try a two year untreated asthma bout. Minor by some standards, but exhausting just the same]to me but dangerous to those with real problems. What we see of American experience still seems worse unless one is quite well off.

All that just to situate me.

What concerns me most about America is the question of what I should make of the country as part of the international system, as part of Western civilization, and as a nation and an idea.

There are times it seems like America is the only country left that stands for national sovereignty, self-government and what might seem like the peculiarly Anglo-Saxon approach to liberty. Also the last country standing for traditional values of any kind or for Western Civilization. A conservative force in history, at least now, and in the best possible sense.

Then there are the days I remember that America is also still a revolutionary force, driving to transform the world into its image, social, political and economic. Sometimes it seems that the ideal end result for many Americans, left and right, and now especially on the right, would be a world order remade in the image of the US Constitution, a global republic not necessarily the USA but modeled on it. Even, sometimes, it seems that Americans would give up the sovereignty of the United States if that was the alternative.

It would not be such a bad world. If the end state of humanity were political unity, it would be better to have this than any other form of international government I have yet seen proposed. But still, it would mean the end of all our particular forms of society and government, good or bad. It is only this prospect that reminds me that some of America's foes have real concerns.

I figure I can only say all this because at least some of my concerns will not be found alien by NRO readers in the US and, at least, I wouldn't expect an American to instinctively condemn another's patriotism for his own country. Even progressive Teddy Roosevelt had pithy things to say in favour of it.

But you do leave me with some concerns that seem to me more left-wing in Canada but that might be more general concerns, for good and understandable reasons, in Europe. But they still strike me as holding the US to a standard not realistic, and not one Europeans ever held themselves to when they were on top.

It seems unlikely that any of the major European powers of the day, given the same circumstances and equipments, would have refrained from nuking their opponent a couple of times [at least with the rather limited first generation of the technology] to spare the lives of many more people on the ground and, frankly more urgently, millions of their own men. Even if they also took account of the side benefit of intimidating a strategic rival [in this case the USSR]. It was war. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki differed from every other air raid only in the technical complexity of the bombs and minimal aircraft requirements of a one bomb raid. And it seems, at least to me, that this issue has not been ignored in the US. It has been raised and hashed over again and again and, at least to my satisfaction and that of many others, found justifiable and defensible.

I admit references to Dresden get my back up for quite different reasons, though I think that raid is similarly defensible on a variety of military and moral grounds and not unique in the context of the war. The issue just bothers me more because my family were British at the time of the war. And both their countrymen and my fellow Canadians took part in that raid, as in other raids over Germany. I do not think Germany is owed any apology for it. Certainly I cannot see why any other European country would ask for one on Germany's behalf. In the present context, I especially see no reason the US should be asked to mull it over yet again when Britain is not, nor Canada, whose men also took part. And I for one would resolutely oppose any apology by my country.

That is not to say these things were not hellish. Only that they were neither unique in the context of the war, nor unjustifiable.

Americans do have a greater tendency than some to see opponents as evil. Sometimes the rhetoric is tiresome, if only because I would like a bit more Machiavellian pragmatism. It ought to be sufficient that an enemy is an enemy, and that be good enough reason to finish him off. They need not all be evil. As it happens, it would have been offensive if the Americans had characterized the Mexicans or the Spanish that way. We all called the Germans evil in World War One, and the case was not entirely without merit. In World War II there is no dispute of it as regards either Germany or Japan. Japan was also waging genocidal war. Neither one was just engaging in any run of the mill 19th century imperialism.

Personally I think communism evil. Your mileage may vary.

On the other hand, while I don't think many Americans ever quite characterized the British as "evil", I certainly do resent the way some, in 1776 as now, overstate the catalogue of abuses in the Declaration of Independence and understate the idea that perhaps the colonies should have been obligated to pay for the cost of the epic war that freed them forever from the French threat. But it doesn't matter as much now. Britain did try to hem in their settlements, did not concede them representation consistent with the planned taxation, and in return they rebelled and stole a lot of private property from exiled loyal subjects. That's the way it goes. And they never resorted to calling the British or us evil as such.

All of which is only to say that their use of the word evil has not necessarily been disproportionate or unshared by their allies.

Maybe it seems to get repeated a bit hysterically nowadays, but that seems more to be part of the internal debate in the US.

I concede I don't get your Napoleon reference. The British sometimes considered him in those days to be a bloody-handed tyrant and usurper and a mortal threat to their independence and that of others, which he was, but they calmed down enough not to stress "evil" and to exile him rather than shoving him in some rat hole. And nobody regarded him the way they later saw Hitler or saw him as setting out to murder millions of innocents for no reason. Are you suggesting the British nonetheless overreacted "American-style" by exiling him there or that contemporary America would not be as measured as the British were then?

I am not sure America does over-rely on force. Most of the force they have used seems to have been the most appropriate solution at the time. Perhaps I thought the Kosovo war a bit unnecessary from a strict national interest point of view and the rhetoric too dismissive of some elements of the Serb case, but I remember that America would also have taken a huge PR hit by not interfering. What could they do either way except solve Europe's problems for them yet again?

Most of their other uses of force have been wholly justified, even if the execution keeps getting bungled along the way. These are hard things to get right. Europe's efforts in the world, by force or by diplomacy, have not been crowned with any greater successes.

As to rules, well.... It seems to me that signing on to the ICC is a renunciation of sovereignty over one's own citizens and a surrender of their rights. It is one thing to say that a traveller who commits a crime in another sovereign country ought to be judged by its laws. America is not always in the right on that point, as the absurd fracas in the media over that teenager in Singapore some years back demonstrated. But many Americans were ready to see him caned just the same, for breaking local laws and being judged by the local court. And my country is not always reasonable on this either, especially when it comes to Canadians breaking US laws in the US.

But signing on to allow one's own citizens to be judged by a body set up by other sovereigns for things not necessarily crimes in the US and not necessarily committed in any of the judging states' jurisdiction, or necessarily crimes at all, is something else again. I don't think the thing should exist. More to the point, as a body set up by treaty, the US is perfectly free not to join it. No country is obliged to sign any treaty or to surrender sovereignty.

As it happens, the US also did not sign the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention that would have required it to treat terrorists as soldiers, nor was it in any way obliged to either sign it, or, having not signed it, to now obey it.

On the public opinion thing, broadly agreed. American media seems relentlessly shallow to me often enough, CNN and MSNBC no less than Fox and often more so. The public just doesn't care that much. Then again, it doesn't have to, much. The US is large and until recently was a world unto itself for the typical citizen. Just as the typical European didn't have to know much outside Europe [to use a comparably sized and complicated scale] and did not. Indeed, did not always know much outside his piece of Europe.

From what I have seen, European public opinion is not necessarily all that much more informed or energized by world affairs. They seem mainly interested in property prices and their own domestic issues at most, like people every where.

Sorry to rant. I hope I have given all this in the right spirit of discussion. If you wan't real ranting, just get me started on the inadequacies of my own country....

@bob jones, you lie... EVERYONE has the same right to marry in this country!

EVERY individual has the right to get married... ANY man can marry any woman he chooses and ANY woman can marry any man she chooses, with the usual exceptions for age, relationship, etc... there is no discrimination or loss of rights.