This week’s issue of The Economist has an article explaining how Britain’s Labour party is “besotted with Uncle Sam.” This surprised me, because NR’s resident British expat, Charlie Cooke, no Labourite he, has also been effusive in his praise of America. Shouldn’t one side love us and the other hate us? But a close reading of the Economist piece reveals the difference between the two.
According to The Economist, what Labourites love about America is its politics — blogs, biographies of past presidents, think tanks, universities, consultants, advisers, campaign managers, Elizabeth Warren, Bill de Blasio, and of course the unreciprocating object of their most ardent affections, Barack Obama.
Charlie, by contrast, loves America for its technology, for the Southwest, for Patsy Cline, for its citizens’ restlessness and their no-nonsense approach to national defense, but most of all for its freedom — particularly the Second Amendment. Not even Obama can diminish this admiration.
In other words, liberals wish America had a people worthy of their government, while conservatives wish America had a government worthy of its people. That’s true of Americophiles on both sides of the Atlantic.