Effette European Elites Agree: Americans Are Barbarians!

Why?  Because we dare to hunt down and kill our enemies, as opposed to simply surrendering to them, and for having the shockingly bad manners to celebrate such victories of good over evil.

Via Deuschtland's Der Spiegel, German political scientist Herfried Münkler dissects us like lab rats:

Münkler: Two thousand years ago, a Roman politician would have been able to publicly express his pleasure at getting his revenge. The crucial difference is that Western politicians today are people who are influenced by Christianity, people who are bound to the idea of mercy. Only someone who believes in the existence of 'evil' and who does not explain 'evil' in terms of an unhappy childhood, someone who upholds the Old Testament principle of an eye for eye and a tooth for tooth, is justified in publicly expressing their joy at the death of an enemy and their satisfaction at getting revenge. The Americans' reactions to bin Laden's death therefore mainly reflect the fact that they have different values (from Europeans).

SPIEGEL ONLINE: At Ground Zero in New York, people openly rejoiced about the death of bin Laden. The images were reminiscent of Muslims celebrating in the Gaza Strip after the 9/11 attacks. Do you think that is acceptable?

Münkler: For European observers, these kinds of public gatherings are indeed somewhat embarrassing, because they demonstrate a kind of unthinking naïveté, and also because there is something provocative about them....

Der Spiegel makes an ugly moral equivalence:  That Muslims celebrating the murder of 3,000 innocent men and women is the same as Americans celebrating the death of the man who committed this mass murder.  I suppose they were aghast on V-E Day, too.  Ironic too that Münkler  - and Der Spiegel - put quotes around the word "evil" and debate its true existence, being that they are a nation that carried out possibly the greatest campaign of evil in human history.  Unless, of course, 60 million Germans suffered from an "unhappy childhood".  It also helps if you are looking to, say, excuse the actions of one Osama bin Laden...

Der Spiegel also gives us a roundup on  thecriticism of German Chancellor Angela Merkel 's obviously inflammatory statement: "I am glad that it was successful, the killing of bin Laden"  :

That statement is now being heavily criticized in German political and religious circles, including among members of Merkel's own party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). And Germany's Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, of Merkel's coalition party, the Free Democrats (FDP), is calling on Western nations to temper their responses to the news of Osama bin Laden's death.

"We must be careful, that we in the West -- with understanding of the relief felt -- do not send images into the world that could again lead to incitement or to the heroization of al-Qaida," he told the conservative German daily Die Welt Wednesday.....

Criticism was also lobbed from members of Merkel's own party. Siegfried Kauder, of the CDU, and the chairman of the legal committee of the Bundestag, told the newspaper Passauer Neue Presse: "I would not have formulated it in that way. Those are thoughts of revenge that one should not harbor. That is from the Middle Ages."


So even in victory - a victory which they had no ownership of, incidentally - Europeans consul fear and shame - fear of Muslims (better act deferentially, even when we have defeated them in a war they have ignited), and embarrassment in protecting one's life and liberty (property of the state, I suppose) by eliminating those whom would destroy it.

We exuberant Americans - boisterous in our freedom to speak and to act without shame, with pride in our martial prowess in a dangerous world - refuse to make fear or shame the central themes in our existence.  For that, we are told, we are embarrassing, provocative, unthinking, and naive.
 
Maybe it is just that our European betters - the Germans most of all - have a hell of a lot more to be ashamed of than we do.  If they are looking for barbarians, they could do worse than look in the mirror, rather than casting about for vessels to drain their collective guilt...