The Nation: Jingoism in Reverse

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Anti-American Americans are reproached by a British journalist in this month's Commentary. Just as some American jingoists insist that their country has the best of everything, or used to, so do others glory in claiming it has the worst. Those Americans who accentuate the negative recognize no statute of limitations on American sinning. "Every American in each generation, it appears," writes Henry Fairlie, "must regard himself as responsible for all that his society has done, does, and will do." While no Englishman feels any personal responsibility for the slave trading practiced by his ancestors, Anti-American Americans demand that their fellow countrymen feel guilty permanently about slavery and other transgressions of the past. Anti-Americans prefer role playing with inflated symbols —"Violence is as American as cherry pie"—to the rigors of logical thought. This sort of emotional indulgence, writes Fairlie, "returns no answer from the historical experience of the country itself, its actual achievements and its actual failures, but instead sedulously and virulently retreats to a mythical interpretation of that experience which has no historical reality."