Originally Posted by D9

What this panders to is the pathological European idea that America is inherently undemocratic. Variously, we are stereotyped as a nation of censorship, a nation which so economically undermines whole groups that they are effectively disenfranchised, a nation of mindless conformists with dollar signs twirling hypnotically in everyone's eyes, etc. They also criticize the two-party system as inherently undemocratic. Ironically, they cited the 2000 election as evidence of the weakness of American "democracy." I say ironic, because they cite perhaps the closest election in world history as an example of declining democracy, yet it is in the world's dictatorships that we see the nearly unanimous victories for one side in sham elections. Is a close election not a symptom of the strength of a democracy, rather than a sign on weakness? Would it instead be a sign of a strong democracy if George Bush had carried 99% of the vote, as the Ayatollahs and despots of the world regularly do?

The never ending European suspicion about American democracy is irrational. It is the product of an irrational compulsion to derride America at every turn, even contradictorily (before we got involved in the Balkans we were "isolationists" neglected our global duty, when we got involved we were "imperialists" pushing everyone else around). It stems from a craven psychological need to rationalize Europe's own monumental failures over the past two centuries, and from the dominance of the tired Marxist ideology that still pervades across Europe, in substance if not in name. They still, essentially, see liberalism and capitalism as the great scourges of the planet. The US, as the greatest proponent and wellspring of those values, is guilty and suspect by definition. Anti-Americanism is an intellectual disease that has passed the point of epidemic in Europe until it is almost universal. That it exists to this level is pathetic. That American elected officials will stoop to the level of pandering to this pathological intellectual defect is worse.