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Are you old enough to recognize the name of James Taylor? He’s a singer-songwriter, now 76 years old. Among his hits are “Fire and Rain” (1970) and “Carolina in My Mind” (1968). During and after the Vietnam War he wrote and recorded his share of antiwar songs. “Soldiers” (1971) paints a horrific picture of nine GIs, out of an original twenty, who’ve made it “Through the night / Half of them wounded / And barely alive.” “Native Son” (1991) asks veterans who are “Brothers in arms no more” whether they’ve “been to hell.”
Taylor composed other antiwar anthems. You get the idea. War is hell. The soldier’s life is a nightmare. And veterans of combat are scarred forever.
But that was then. Now James Taylor is singing a different tune. The other day, he took to X to praise “Zelensky, the hero of Ukraine,” to celebrate the Ukrainian soldiers’ “righteous resistance,” and to maintain that we’ve all felt a “thrill” when some of those soldiers have “paid the price in patriots’ blood.”
How, he goes on to ask,
do we now turn away? To stand by, mute and cowed, as the men who would be king[,] Putin, Trump and Musk, huddle in their fortress and decide the fate of nations, shutting out the people they betray?
Is this what has become of the cradle of liberty,…and the home of the brave..? That we slide the hidden dagger in the back of those who were our champions? While our allies in the defeat of Hitler and Stalin witness our betrayal in disbelief…
Okay, a couple of problems here. Let’s get this howler out of the way first: the U.S. and its allies, of course, didn’t defeat Stalin – Stalin (ahem) was one of those allies.
Second, could the contrast between the horrid vision of war in Taylor’s Vietnam songs and the war-glorifying rhetoric of his post on X be any more striking? It’s as if the harshly realistic World War I poet Wilfred Owen (“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”) had turned into his romantic counterpart Rupert Brooke (“If I should die, think only this of me: / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England”).
Third, how sick is it to “thrill” to the spectacle of young Ukrainian men bleeding to death on a battlefield?
Fourth, and this is what I want to expatiate upon, the notion that Ukrainians and other Europeans were ever America’s “champions” is absurd – as is the claim that Trump’s determination to end the bloodshed in Ukraine amounts to a “betrayal.”
It’s not just James Taylor who’s been pushing this fantasy. Writing in the Guardian, Noah Rothman of National Review fretted that Trump, by failing to take into account European pride and sensitivity in his pursuit of a peace agreement in Ukraine, is “needlessly antagonising” our “partners.” Rothman approvingly quoted the assertion by Singapore’s defense minister, Ng Eng Hen, that “America’s ‘image’ abroad has ‘changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent.’”
There’s been a lot of this sort of rhetoric lately. It is, as they say, to laugh. Among European elites, in any case, America’s post-World War II image as “liberator” didn’t last very long. For heaven’s sake, the French began resenting us the moment the waters off Normandy began turning red. Yes, there are still occasions – such as wreath-layings at U.S. military cemeteries on the anniversary of V-E Day – when at least some Europeans gratefully recall their liberation. But the idea of European leaders as our “partners” or “champions” is quite a stretch.
On the contrary, to those leaders and their legacy-media puppets, America has long been the generous and indulgent parent whom they take for granted and treat with brat-like disrespect. As far as they’re concerned, America can do nothing right – certainly not when there’s a Republican in the White House. When George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, he was the moral equivalent of Saddam Hussein; when Trump seeks to stop the killing in Ukraine, he’s Hitler.
Trump has characterized America’s transatlantic relationship – and our relationship with much of the rest of the world, including Canada – as, in many senses, a one-way street. He’s right. They can impose tariffs on us, but if we reciprocate, we’re being mean. They expect us to keep the UN afloat, even if they use it as a platform from which to betray and berate us. They expect us to fund NATO to a far greater extent than they do, but if we ask them to pay more – or actually act the part of the senior member – they throw a fit.
Rothman even chided J.D. Vance for criticizing European governments’ rejection of liberal values. “The speech inflamed European passions,” contended Rothman, who added that Trump & co. “appear to derive some psychological gratification from gratuitously needling America’s friends.” First, what’s gratuitous about calling Europe out on its abandonment of Enlightenment values? Second, when “America’s friends” leave freedom behind, are their regimes still worth defending with young American lives?
Third, Trump’s “needling” is nothing compared to the amount of abuse that’s been directed by Europe at America for centuries.
It started in colonial times, when anti-American abuse was an expression of aristocratic condescension toward a republic governed of, by, and for the uncouth masses. Even after America had created the modern era, become the planet’s scientific and technological powerhouse, settled two world wars, and put men on the moon, even after the U.S. dollar had become the international reserve currency and the U.S. Navy the guarantor of global trade and American universities the gold standard, even after many European countries had formed democratic governments based in large part on the American system, European political and media elites continued to portray Americans as knuckle-dragging morons.
It never made sense. It never added up. But people in Europe believed it. Or at least enjoyed pretending to believe it.
A 2018 scandal illuminated this sorry state of affairs. In December of that year, it emerged that a dozen or so eye-popping reports from America written by one Claas Relotius for Germany’s biggest magazine, Der Spiegel, had been pure fiction. The running theme of the articles, which professed to report recent events in flyover country, was that middle America is populated by bigots, hicks, rubes.
As James Kirchick pointed out in a January 2019 examination of the case for The Atlantic, the reason why Relotius had gotten away with his fabrications for so long was that he had given his editors “what they wanted – what they expected – to hear about America.” Indeed, Relotius’s lies were of a piece with almost all of Der Spiegel’s so-called America coverage, which Kirchick rightly described as “crude and sensational anti-Americanism” – a characterization that could be applied to the great majority of the European legacy media’s coverage of America.
During George W. Bush’s 2004 election campaign, Der Spiegel ran a headline asking: “Will America Be Democratic Again?” It’s a question that European politicians and media love to pose every time a Republican’s in power across the pond. And never has the phony hand-wringing about dictatorship coming to America been more hysterical than it has been since the advent of Trump 2.0. Yet these fools were still outraged when Trump’s vice president gently but firmly pointed out, in Munich, that it’s Europe that is abandoning democracy.
The dirty little secret, of course, is that European leaders have never really been entirely on board with democracy anyway. We rescued their countries from the Nazi German empire only to see them putting together what gradually developed into an undemocratic superstate with its power center in – where else? – Germany.
Two decades ago I reviewed a book called A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World by a British columnist named Will Hutton, who was only voicing the elitist European consensus when he deplored the “American belief in the primacy of the individual” and scorned the individualist-oriented American Revolution – even as he championed the European “belief in the primacy of society” and the communalist-oriented French Revolution. It was precisely this attitude, I noted in my review, that “made possible the rise of Fascism, Nazism, and Communism” and “obliged the U.S. to step in and save the Continent from itself in World War II.”
And it’s precisely this attitude that makes Trump’s return to power – and the rise in Europe of politicians like Georgia Meloni, who said at this year’s CPAC, “We serve the people, we do not rule over them” – strike terror in Europe’s corridors of power. For Trump and MAGA Americans are showing the European masses how it’s done. True, as Daniel Greenfield wrote the other day, the way in which European parliamentary systems are structured may well “make it impossible for Europe to vote its way out of the Islamization crisis.” Still, the elites’ hold on power is becoming more and more precarious. And they are plainly trembling in fear that the European masses may yet awaken in numbers large enough to send those elites, at long last, to the dustbin of history.
Awesome piece. Two thumbs up from me: 👍 👍
Well said Bruce !!!
This is an excellent essay. European disdain for America may not have been universal, but was an early riser with the notion that the dregs of Europe were those who left for America for 500 years. A reverse Oedipus complex has the traditional fear of the king that a stranger will be born to threaten the throne. That does not favor freedom, but repression.
For those who don’t know about how Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen died, neither survived the War.
Brooke served from the beginning, fought in France during the initial German invasion and was in the front lines during the 1914 Christmas Miracle. He died of cholera on the Greek Island of Mudros and was buried there on the eve of the attack on the Gallipoli Peninsular that began on 25th April 1915.
Owen to served from very early on and was badly wounded and lightly gassed in 1918, to the extent that he was offered a medical discharge. To the horror of the peace at any price idiots of the left wing Bloomsbury Set he chose to go back to his unit and the men he was commanding and was killed in action only a couple of weeks before the Armistice.
Both were volunteers, both were officers, and both were members of the British elite at the time.
Their equivalents these days would be running for the hills and looking for any possible way to avoid service even if Britain was at immediate risk of armed invasion.
It shows the difference in mindset that has come about in the elites of society over the last 100 years.
Great post – many (like me) don’t know how Great men like those two sacrificed for the good of their Nation! As far as today’s “elite” fighting an ARMED invasion? They won’t even fight an “ideology” invasion! The EU is almost lost to islam! A few more years and there’s no turning back – especially when the muslims gain complete political and MILITARY control! WHO will they call to come rescue them – AGAIN? We KNOW who – the only Nation built on FREEDOM! But, I fear for Our Nation if we do not curb the islamic invasion and the COMMUNIST DEMOcrat Party!!
Hopefully the next FOUR and (please GOD) at least 12 more years of COMPETENT, INTELLIGENT, and Patriotic Leadership will end the pogrom to destroy Our Nation from within!
I think it was President Reagan who said the USA was the last great hope for Freedom – the rest of the world seems to be working to make that an absolute truth!
We should offer Europe a trade. We take their “far-right” citizens who promise to take no public assistance for 10 years – in exchange one-for-one for our leftists. Our leftists are in favor of wide open borders, high taxes, and strict government regulations, Europe already has those things. One would think they’d jump at the chance to legally live there.
There would have to be some adjustment for details such as assistance for immigrant tornado victims and sanctions for emigrating Americans who tick off their hosts enough to be deported, but I think we could make it work.
Excellent idea!
“he deplored the “American belief in the primacy of the individual” and scorned the individualist-oriented American Revolution – even as he championed the European “belief in the primacy of society” and the communalist-oriented French Revolution.”
There you have it in a nut shell, the hatred of the individual and individualism, that’s one of the primary reasons freedom, liberty, and Laissez-faire capitalism are so hated by so many in the world including in America.
And let us not forget that much of this hatred of man for being man, and the desire to leash him and rule over him, comes from religion. The concept of freedom in Christianity does not mean the SECULAR freedom of the individual pursuing his own personal happiness on earth but only the freedom to choose to OBEY a higher authority or be doomed to hell if he chooses not to obey authority.
The idea that the moral purpose of life is the individual pursuit of personal happiness, here on earth, in this lifetime, is a thoroughly pagan and secular idea, it does not come from Jesus Christ but from the pagan Aristotle.
“Europeans do believe in Original Sin, i.e., in man’s innate depravity; Americans do not. Americans see man as a value—as clean, free, creative, rational. But the American view of man has not been expressed or upheld in philosophical terms (not since the time of our first Founding Father, Aristotle; see his description of the “magnanimous man”)….
A European is disarmed in the face of a dictatorship: he may hate it, but he feels that he is wrong and, metaphysically, the State is right. An American would rebel to the bottom of his soul. . . . Defiance, not obedience, is the American’s answer to overbearing authority.” – Ayn Rand
>>>>>>>>>Snore______________cough cough.
Oh God, was someone blathering about Ayn Rand again?
Oh well. Nothing really important going on. Think I’ll go back to bed. There that’s better.
“For Aristotle, the good life is one of personal self-fulfillment. Man should enjoy the values of this world. Using his mind to the fullest, each man should work to achieve his own happiness here on earth. And in the process he should be conscious of his own value. Pride, writes Aristotle—a rational pride in oneself and in one’s moral character—is, when it is earned, the “crown of the virtues.”
A proud man does not negate his own identity. He does not sink selflessly into the community. He is not a promising subject for the Platonic state.
Although Aristotle’s writings do include a polemic against the more extreme features of Plato’s collectivism, Aristotle himself is not a consistent advocate of political individualism. His own politics is a mixture of statist and anti-statist elements. But the primary significance of Aristotle, or of any philosopher, does not lie in his politics. It lies in the fundamentals of his system: his metaphysics and epistemology.” – Leonard Peikoff
Because when I need someone to lecture me on how live my life I always turn to Lenny Piehole’s second hand take on Aristotle.
The one thing I have learned about Objectivist losers is they never take responsibility for their own ideas. They just rinse and repeat the writings of others and then try and interpret them for us poor uneducated peons.
You are a bore. Piehole is a bore. Yeah I know….”If you don’t like my comments, don’t read them.” As if you ever have something profound to impart.
Actually T, I don’t read your stupid comments. Life’s too short.
We want nothing at all to do with any North American(Soviet)Union and nothing to do with the New World Order and the UN either
It’s difficult to explain how some of ARE undereducated !
I enjoy both sides of debates, to me it’s MY education !
When someone i respect gets hammered, it hurts ME !
However, that’s education !
The only way I will be educated sufficiently is to have been IMMORTAL !
I would have it all ( like Bogie and Bacall ) !
Imagine observing the great bang !
Thanks for reading my dreams………
Eddie…..aka…..tzvi
I always read every column Mr. Bawer writes. Great column as usual.
My family history includes quite a range of characters. Those who helped support the king who repulsed the Normans a Hastings in1055. Tgeywere deeded largish tract of ;and near Liverpool where that family name is almost everywhere a milieeium later. Some fled the religious persecution of self righteous kings who deermined to be popes.. the non-conformists in the family are legion. Many fled Ireland and Scotland for the New World. ive were on the Mayflwer in 1620. Mot who survived became ship builders, sea captains, merchants, successful businessmen. They were on both sides of the lines at Lexingtin and Concord. Those Loyalists on the losing side at first led to Canada, setling near WIndsor Ontario. Within twi generations most returned to the now-growing and prosspering America. Some went to the war in Europe to rid that cintinent of the knot sea curse, many losing their lives in the process. Tramsporting troops across the Atlantic by air to join the fight. Paratropers jumping at North Africa to beat Rommel, laer at Anzio in Italy to thump in Missolini. still more jumed at Normandy on d Day to free the froggies from Hitler. Still others cleared out the Japanese on all the islands stretcthing from the Philippines all the way to Okinawa. Earlier, some fought in the Battle at Manilia Bay.. Ine was conscripted into the Tyrolian army about 1840, defected as they crossed the Swiss Alps, made his way t Holland thence to the New World. Setled, with his new family, in Nevada where he brought reliable water to irrigae farmlend, bringing new prosperoity. Ine was key to the devlopment of the inertial navigation system used now for some 80 years for submarine, space travel, etc. That same guy was key to the development of all the ground checkout and support systems for all our man in space programmes, mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Shuttle.
Hmmm I think the Battle of Hastings was in 1066 & the Normans won.
And so it goes.. all these folks are precisely the sort being scorned by today’s “elite” Europeans. The ones who GET THINGS DONE, invent new things (that inertial navigation system uas provenn a key part of seafaring and space ravel, even civillian aviation.
I suppose the Brits are so proud of their grooming gangs infesting may parts of England, terrorising families and young girls across that sorry land. How sae is it to be out of ab evening in Paris, Tours, Berlin, Stuttgart, Stockholm, or any other of the larger “developed” cities in Europe?
One more amusing factoid: remember those Loyalists who fled the newly independent Colonies and hied themselves off to Windsor: to be “secure” under the Briish Crown? Nearly all of them, within two generations, returned to the now-thriving colonies, mostly settling in the upper mIdwest. They helped develop the railroads, rural electrification, industry, farming. They “saw the light” and went toward it.. And prospered.
Yu can keep yer sad sack kings and popes. Read that first Article of Ammendment to our Constitution again.
i suppose you all are proud of Trump and Vance today, showing their you know whats and deeply offended that a great Ukrainian patriot had the guts to stand up to them. wow. you guys are sad. Reagan and Buckley rolling in their graves.
James Taylor is a singer/songwriter. He’s neither a historian nor a political scholar. One of the most destructive phenomena to come out of the sixties and seventies was appointing our popular entertainers as our socio-political gurus. Let’s not contribute to the mythology by giving JT some unearned authority that he was never qualified to hold in the first place. This just in: Those days are gone, man.
However, the left (and this includes nearly all of the singer/songwriters you allude to) were major lefties…and still are.
And they love nothing more than making up folk heroes out of whole cloth. Voila!!!
Well spotted, Mr. Bawer.
Eating the bitter medicine.
To the Generous and the Brave.
It’s all well written, Bruce Bawer, and therefore well understood, as usual, I was born 1947 and remember the 1950’s very well. My parents’ generations were very pro American (and pro English), and family events were held in an atmosphere of great expectations for the USA, admiration of the power, for the generous and the brave.
Later in the late 1960’s I learned that antiamericanism was spreading from the universities. All who left uni were infected with the virus. And the phenomenon never disappeared. Looking back it seems clear to me that millions upon millions fell victim to socialist/social democratic propaganda on a national level. Today the EU elites are heroically swallowing the bitter medicine of being reprimanded and left alone by sugar Daddy for all to see the size of the little European leaders when the bloat is fizzying off.
For a future endearment of our cousins across the damm we need to replace state-sponsored press with truth seeking private information about world affairs. The old order of the press has stepped down, ending up serving as a propaganda arm for government. Awash with grants there’s no really need for readers, listeners or viewers.
How else comes that over 90% of Danish voters would prefer Kamala Harris to Donald Trump! We are led astray.