Friday, March 07, 2003

Several bloggers have linked to this article from the New Yorker by Simon Schama (author of several damned good books; I highly recommend Citizens, on the French Revolution) on the history of anti-Americanism. It's fascinating and everyone ought to read it, especially since the conclusion of the piece--there's a tie-in with the war on Saddam-- is that Americans somehow deserve anti-Americanism. Now, Schama's text is by no means rabidly America-bashing, he's no Noam Chomsky, but his last section is, to say the least, critical. Now, criticism is good, and this is about the sharpest criticism you're likely to see. It ought to be a good source of challenges for some of us hawks' arguments. I don't think Schama's criticism is too hard to successfully contradict, but it's an excellent mental exercise. And the historically informative five-sixths of the article are typically excellent Schama.

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