US - World relations

I always like hearing about how countries outside the USA is viewing us, and how we as a whole view them in return. Found two things. One is this poll that shows how we view other countries as allied. Then there is this that follows.

Euro-Gloaters

Media: Far and wide, but mostly in Europe, the world's media see Katrina's devastation as a sign of America's cultural inferiority and social backwardness. But let's look at the facts.

'The Shaming Of America," reads The Economist's headline. French left-wing daily Le Monde's headlines speak of "fractures" in American society. Spain's and Germany's newspapers take turns gleefully blaming President Bush.

No question, people suffered unnecessarily following Katrina. The federal government and state and local officials deserve their share of the blame. We're all for rational, measured criticism from all quarters.

But many among Europe's media and intellectual classes have used a horrible disaster to score cheap debating points against U.S. culture and its way of life. This strikes us not only as false and misguided, but seriously lacking in insight.

After all, wasn't it just two summers ago that Europe let an estimated 40,000 people die during a heat wave — nearly 15,000 in France alone — in part because many people couldn't be bothered to return from their August vacations on the Riviera to help Grandmere and Grandpere leave their sweltering apartments?

Despite such shocking failures of the "European model," the region's chattering classes babble on about the "fractures" in American society — between black and white, rich and poor. This is particularly galling, given Europe's economic failure in recent years.

OK, you want fractures? Europe's fast-growing Muslim population — now 20 million and growing, unlike the population of the rest of Europe — is spawning a generation of West-hating terror bombers, like the ones who murdered dozens of innocent Londoners on July 7. France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Spain all share this growing problem.

You want shame? How about Europe ignoring the slaughter of civilians in the Balkans during the 1990s, until the U.S. sent troops and bombers — without U.N. approval, of course — to halt the killing? Or German and French complicity in Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein's odious regime? "Shame" isn't strong enough a word.

Even the fixation of Europeans on what they call America's "endemic" poverty strikes a false note. After all, "poor" is itself a relative term. And in recent years, Europe, with its lumbering welfare state, ridiculous taxation, double-digit unemployment and cumbersome rules, has by U.S. standards become increasingly poor.

That's right. Poor. The image of the well-to-do European, driving a luxury sports car, sipping red wine, working short days and enjoying eight weeks of vacation a year will soon be a thing of the past — if it ever existed in reality. Europe is slipping into genteel poverty.

A study last year by the Swedish think tank Timbro noted this: The EU's 15 main nations, on average, have greater incomes than just four U.S. states. And Americans, on average, consume twice as much in dollar terms than citizens in Europe.

This gap, Timbro noted, isn't narrowing. It's widening.

Europeans have invented a word for the kind of socioeconomic gloating we've seen in recent weeks: "schadenfreude," or joy in the misfortunes of others. Well, here's another word they might want to put into their English-language vocabulary: humility.

Source: Investor's Business Daily