The second special guest blogger of launch week is Jules Crittenden. Is there hope for Europe?

Two, once-powerful, anti-Americans

America had de Tocqueville. Europe has O’Rourke. His classic “Among the Euro-weenies” from 1986, after the US air attacks on Libya, holds up well despite the passage of two decades, and America’s intervening gift of freedom from Soviet tyranny. Like d’Tocqueville, O’Rourke’s insights as a foreigner tell us much both about the character of Europe and that of America. I quote liberally here, but encourage all students of US-European relations to read the whole thing, in O’Rourke’s “Holiday in Hell” anthology:

I’ve been over here for one gray, dank spring month now, and I think I can tell you why everyone with an IQ bigger than his hat size hit the beach at Ellis Island. Say what you want about “land of opportunity” and “purpled mountains majesty above the fruited plain.,” our forebears moved to the United States because they were sick to death of lukewarm beer — and lukewarm coffee and lukewarm bathwater and lukewarm mystery cutlets with mucky-colored mushroom cheese junk on them. Everything in Europe is lukewarm except the radiators…

I’ve had it with these dopey little countries and all their poky borders. You can’t swing a cat without sending it through customs … even the languages are itty-bitty. Sometimes you need two or three just to get you through lunch.

…

It’s not like the Europeans have been very nice hosts either. The whole month here has been one long shower of shit about America, just because we took a punch at the Libyans. There were huge demonstrations in Germany, Italy and Spain. In West Berlin, twenty thousand young bucketheads turned out. In Barcelona a group of protestors vented their fury on that symbol of American imperialism, a McDonald’s. In London thousands of peacemongers blocked the main shopping thoroughfare of Oxford Street, staging sitdown strikes and throwing bottles at the police … In Belgium, a friend of mine was stopped on the street by a policeman and told he should be ashamed to be an American.

…

What I didn’t understand, I said, was the emotional intensity of the demonstrations. Big civilized countries have been launching punitive raids on weedy little native powers since … well, at least since the Redcoats shot up Lexington and Concord.

Meg (Beresford, secretary general of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) said that when the F-111s were launched from English soil, the British realized for the first time what “what those bases were for.”

This made the British sound a little thick.

Meg claimed that the attempt to kill Qaddafi himself had upset people, “like watching one of those John Wayne movies.”

When a European mentions John Wayne, you know you’re going to get an earful.

Meg admitted there was “resentment at American culture.” She said, “Western democracies feel there is nothing immoral about spreading that kind of system, spreading Western-style democracy.” She paused. “McDonald’s everywhere.”

Finally, an exasperated O’Rourke upon hearing American foreign policy again compared to …

“A John Wayne movie,” I said. “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? We think war is a John Wayne movie. We think life is a John Wayne movie — with good guys, bad guys, as simple as that. Well, you know somethig, Mister Limey Poofter? You’re right. And let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD.

“We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France, and Spain , roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt-kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go.

“You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying Cheerio. Hell can’t hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen and jack of all you Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out for lunch.”

Of course, the guy should have punched me. But this was Europe. He just smiled his shabby, superior European smile. (God, don’t these people have dentists?)

Harsh words? Regrettably short on tact and political correctness, maybe. A mirror can be a blunt instrument, but in any case, it hardly seems fair that the rest of the world should be entitled to insult all that is American without getting some of it back once in a while. You really need to read the whole thing. I assume, at places such as the American Studies program at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, for example, there must be entire courses devoted to the study of O’Rourke along with the d’Tocqueville, Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken and John Belushi courses. You do have Belushi courses, don’t you?

A lot has changed since O’Rourke — my neighbor over the state line in “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire, just 70 miles away, next door in American terms — wrote those words, but some things remain the same. Why, it was just last month that my good host at this site, my dear clog-hopping, dike-plugging Dutch friend Michael van der Galien, invoked the term “Cowboy Diplomacy.”

Americans are nothing if not optimistic, however, and in young, forward-thinking Europeans such as van der Galien, despite his insistence on Euro-style moderation, I see a glimmering of hope for your continent. Van der Galien is among those who have recognized that, love America or hate her, there are greater evils in the world and America is leading the fight against them. Europeans like Barcepundit, a bright point of light in capitulist Spain, and the magnificent and most Dissident Frogman, who refuses to limit his range of expression to the Gallic shrug.

Sometimes parents must learn from their children. Europe in fact gave birth to many of the ideas of freedom that were brought to maturation in America, and it is gratifying to see glimmerings of recognition of what freedom is … freedom from diaper-to-crutches support of onerous government, for example … and the responsibilities that come with it, as well as the notion that it might be worth fighting for, even on behalf of others.

European socialism has been under attack for more than two decades, starting with Margaret Thatcher at the time O’Rourke was writing, continuing with Nicholas Sarkozy today. Britain, Italy and Spain at one time stood with America in the liberation of Iraq. The British and the Dutch, with minor non-combat roles by France and Germany, are in the field in Afghanistan.

It could be, despite being cramped by history as well as custom and real estate, that Europe is in fact on the way to becoming a modern, responsible entity, a practical force for good in the world, rather than an overprivileged peanut gallery.

A means of jump-starting this process is readily available. In Iraq, there are millions of people yearning to join the community of free, prosperous, secure nations. America and a handful of allies have brought them part of the way there. Europe, with its cynical support for Saddam Hussein and the unwillingness of so many to do anything to correct that wrong, is in no small part responsible for the plight of those people. Now, with the United States having set the terms for success in Iraq, it is not too late for those in Europe who have hung back or abandoned Iraq to belatedly come to Iraq’s aid.

Send in your combat troops. Send in your businessmen. Show the Iraqi people and the world that you care by doing something more than griping. Recognize that to build something good like freedom, you must bleed. Atone a little for that wretched history of colonialism that built so much of Europe. Some people will hate you, but as you may have noticed, they already do. It might hurt at first, but you will begin to feel better. You will feel bigger. You will know you are doing everything you can to make this world a better place. You will begin to understand what it is like to be an American.

Jules Crittenden blogs at Forward Movement