In the past two years, I took business trips to Italy and Denmark. I asked what people thought about America and Americans. I asked my coworkers, taxi drivers, restaurant employees, and anyone else I could have a conversation with.

Only one person was openly hostile to the US, and he was an Iranian.

Everybody else said pretty much the same thing: America is so big and diverse that it doesn’t make sense to have any opinion whatsoever about the nation as a whole.

When left-wing media outlets conduct polls of their readers, they are self-selecting the most left-wing citizens. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the poll produces exactly the result desired by the media outlets.

In my entire life I’ve never met anyone who was “anti-American.” It’s fabricated nonsense.

Guardian readers, yes, Independent readers, yes. Many MPs in our government, yes, but technically they’re braindead already so their opinions are irrelevant.

The average citizen on the street? No, he/she does not *hate* Americans. We are not all BBC-worshipping morons.

Translation: “America should be more like Europe but still extend its defense shield over Europe, so we Europeans can spend all our money on welfare payments and self indulgence, and not on defense. But America must use its armed forces for no other purpose than defending Europe, certainly not for defending America from threats.”

What the Eurps don’t seem to realize is that lots of Americans, and the Democrats in particular, are moving in a more isolationist direction. This will entail not only an increase in economic protectionism, but also a diminution of that “global role” mentioned above. The Democrats’ enthusiasm for “multilateralism” and diplomacy (no matter how ineffective) is a desperate search for somebody, anybody, no matter how ineffective to take over America’s responsibilities. The Democrats want America to become like Europe with a massive Welfare State and authoritarian and collectivist government. But Europe can do this (foolishly, for it’s a dead end) only because America protects Europe from any external threats. Who will protect America if we follow the European path? And who will protect Europe in such a case? Europeans advocating Obama are calling on us to saw off the branch on which we are all sitting.

Precisely. They do, because those descendants are the progeny of the folks who were willing to take great risks (not always voluntarily) to improve their lives and that of their children.

I suppose I should be thankful for the Czar and his pogroms, since they drove my great grandparents out of Russia and to America.

And when we do better than their idyllic little regimented utopias, it drives them nuts. They can’t stand it.

It’s like high school. When you realize the girl you spend so much time hating doesn’t even know that you hate her, or wouldn’t care if she did — it’s maddening.

Oddly, that was one of the things he liked about it. He broke off all contact when I told him I voted for Bush in 2004.