Federico,
I believe that you should not worry about the relations between Europe and the United States. There will always be people living here who will fault the United States publicly in international circles only because they wish to appear in European eyes as the more enlightened Americans. They take pleasure in seeing us throwing insults back and forth at each other across the wide blue ocean, not out of cruel intentions so much as crassness of feeling. It may seem strange to say it, but it's true, falling for such a massive heap of stupidity will lead us nowhere, even though numerous seemingly intelligent people fall for it all the same.
Europe has a multitude of fine individuals and has always had them, as well as an equal amount of people who will hate America all their lives, who will comment unfavorably against us at every opportunity. The fact that you see in so many Europeans a condescending distaste for us, and a willingness to cure us by cursing us rather than by blessing our liberties and plenty, it is only logical to conclude that such people are living in a state of envy. The American experience is unique to us and it cannot be recreated among any other people, for it is a consciousness of ourselves that makes us American, not our place of birth, our color or any outward manifestation. Those who spite us with their fits and hisses usually fail to do us any lasting harm because we refuse to embark upon a senseless policy of self-righteousness that only leads to delusion.
Those who wish to do us harm do it out of a simplistic and revisionist interpretation of what it means to them to be an American or even a citizen of the world. It would be presumptuous to think that that harm means bodily harm in the minds of the majority, but it is more realistic to state that they are uncertain of their intentions except to be punitive. I believe they wish to punish severely those whom they see as ungrateful for the way of life that their most advanced, enlightened, and liberal awareness offers the world.
Not being able to physically hurt us, they go skulking about spouting some theories of liberation, uprising, and social revolutions that no one but themselves have any faith in, and which after several decades eventually peters out to nothing if not boredom. When one is not endowed with great common sense, the realization of possible failure often leads to unchecked rage, which it is hoped, will cover what they should be ashamed of--the triumph of the thin-skinned! That which makes them so unkind is not so much a determination to exploit and oppress, rather it is an intellectual laziness that has become the currency of our times and they must spend what they have. For it is not natural that people of a generous and wholesome state of mind can build their capacity for goodness by exhausting themselves with such petty meanness.
The moral and spiritual leadership of America and Europe will not come through the mouths of ignorant people saddled with stubborn pride, but through men and women determined to rise above the negative effects that such people leave to posterity. If some people are to become the villains in our society today, it is not out of a spirit of contest or revolution, or that we are better than they are, but that their choices have become destructive policies under which many men and women refuse to seek or live by. Public sentiment cannot be manipulated in such a manner as to make villains out of honest people because, as far as villains go, their necessity is to gradually abandon all that appears reasonable for an implacable determination to succeed at any cost. Eventually, their spines will bend with the wind and their fruit will be thrown to the ground, if not in our lifetime, certainly in that of somebody else.
Giovanni
I believe that you should not worry about the relations between Europe and the United States. There will always be people living here who will fault the United States publicly in international circles only because they wish to appear in European eyes as the more enlightened Americans. They take pleasure in seeing us throwing insults back and forth at each other across the wide blue ocean, not out of cruel intentions so much as crassness of feeling. It may seem strange to say it, but it's true, falling for such a massive heap of stupidity will lead us nowhere, even though numerous seemingly intelligent people fall for it all the same.
Europe has a multitude of fine individuals and has always had them, as well as an equal amount of people who will hate America all their lives, who will comment unfavorably against us at every opportunity. The fact that you see in so many Europeans a condescending distaste for us, and a willingness to cure us by cursing us rather than by blessing our liberties and plenty, it is only logical to conclude that such people are living in a state of envy. The American experience is unique to us and it cannot be recreated among any other people, for it is a consciousness of ourselves that makes us American, not our place of birth, our color or any outward manifestation. Those who spite us with their fits and hisses usually fail to do us any lasting harm because we refuse to embark upon a senseless policy of self-righteousness that only leads to delusion.
Those who wish to do us harm do it out of a simplistic and revisionist interpretation of what it means to them to be an American or even a citizen of the world. It would be presumptuous to think that that harm means bodily harm in the minds of the majority, but it is more realistic to state that they are uncertain of their intentions except to be punitive. I believe they wish to punish severely those whom they see as ungrateful for the way of life that their most advanced, enlightened, and liberal awareness offers the world.
Not being able to physically hurt us, they go skulking about spouting some theories of liberation, uprising, and social revolutions that no one but themselves have any faith in, and which after several decades eventually peters out to nothing if not boredom. When one is not endowed with great common sense, the realization of possible failure often leads to unchecked rage, which it is hoped, will cover what they should be ashamed of--the triumph of the thin-skinned! That which makes them so unkind is not so much a determination to exploit and oppress, rather it is an intellectual laziness that has become the currency of our times and they must spend what they have. For it is not natural that people of a generous and wholesome state of mind can build their capacity for goodness by exhausting themselves with such petty meanness.
The moral and spiritual leadership of America and Europe will not come through the mouths of ignorant people saddled with stubborn pride, but through men and women determined to rise above the negative effects that such people leave to posterity. If some people are to become the villains in our society today, it is not out of a spirit of contest or revolution, or that we are better than they are, but that their choices have become destructive policies under which many men and women refuse to seek or live by. Public sentiment cannot be manipulated in such a manner as to make villains out of honest people because, as far as villains go, their necessity is to gradually abandon all that appears reasonable for an implacable determination to succeed at any cost. Eventually, their spines will bend with the wind and their fruit will be thrown to the ground, if not in our lifetime, certainly in that of somebody else.
Giovanni
