Caveat Empire

Caveat empire

Is America a cultural imperialist? The world should be so lucky

Mark Steyn - May 8, 2006

SNIP

And, as Canada goes, so goes the world. If one compares today's hyperpower with its 19th-century predecessor, Britain exported its language, law, and institutions around the world, so that today there are dozens of countries whose political and legal cultures derive principally from London. On islands from the Caribbean to the South Pacific, you can find miniature Westminsters proudly displaying their maces and Hansards.


But if England is the mother of parliaments, America's a wealthy spinster with no urge to start dating. The United States, almost in inverse proportion to its economic and military might, is culturally isolated. I know, I know--you've read a thousand articles about America's "cultural imperialism." And that's fine if you mean you can fly around the world and eat at McDonald's, dress at the Gap, listen to Hilary Duff, and go see Dude, Where's My Car? 3 pretty much anywhere on the planet. But on the things that matter--which, no disrespect, Miss Duff doesn't--the gap between America and the rest of the world is wider than ever. If you define "cultural dominance" as cheeseburgers, America rules. But in the broader cultural sense, it's a taste most of the world declines to pick up. In that respect, the affronted aesthetes of the Canadian press are not as banal in their preoccupations as they might at first seem: Stephen Harper's Americanized belly, sagging ever more pendulously south of the 49th parallel, sums up the limits of the cheeseburger imperium.


In the eighties, Paul Kennedy warned the U.S. of "imperial overstretch." But, compared to almost all predecessors from Britain back to the Greeks, the distinctive feature of our age is imperial understretch--of a hyperpower reluctant to sell its self-evidently successful features to the rest of the world. Many Americans feel that they came to their conclusions about the value of liberty on their own and that other peoples should, too. While this might be philosophically admirable, the practical drawback is that power abhors a vacuum. If America won't export its values, others will export theirs. Almost all the supranational bodies--from the EU to the International Criminal Court--are, if not explicitly hostile to American values, at the very least antipathetic to them. This, too is historically unprecedented. Multilateral institutions set up and largely funded by America are now one of the principal incubators of anti-Americanism.


For example, it's routinely accepted in Canada and Europe that America gives less foreign aid than other wealthy countries. Americans are famously "stingy," to use the word chosen by Jan Egeland, the UN humanitarian honcho, in the wake of the tsunami. Unlike virtuous Canadians and Scandinavians, stingy rednecks save it all for the trip to the mall. But what does American stinginess actually boil down to? Carol Adelman, head of the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Prosperity, ran the numbers. In 2003, the U.S. government gave US$16 billion to foreign aid--which made it the highest donor in absolute dollars but the lowest among developed nations as a percentage of gross national income.

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Some years ago when I was in the UK several Brits asked me what Americans wanted. Below is my reply.

IMO, most Americans just want to be left alone. We don't care what government rules Mexico, Russia, or any other nation for that matter as long as those nations leave us alone. Sadly no one can leave the US alone. We are blamed for all and sundry and never given any credit for anything we do. Everyone and his brother has some ax to grind with the US and make no bones about what's wrong with the US and how we're a threat and on and on. Things are said and done in regards to the US that are never said or done in regards to any other nation. It's as though we do not have a right to our own sovereignty and must do as others see fit for us to do and not as we wish to do.

As for giving of our national treasure to the rest of the world, why should we? We rebuilt Europe after WWII with the Marshall Plan and got no credit for it. We rebuilt Japan after WWII and soon found ourselves in competition with them and again no thanks for anything. We support Israel and get brickbats for that as well. Then of course we have the blowhards at the UN who seem to think they have some say in US internal affairs. For myself I would not give one red cent to anyone outside the US. It's our money and should stay in our country.

If the rest of the world would just leave us in peace and keep their opinions about our internal affairs to themselves all would be well. Of course that's never going to happen, because the rest of the world always knows better what's good for the US. Then of course none of this takes into account the business people who want to wring out every last dollar of profit they can by selling this nation off a piece at a time.