Alright here's a few thoughts on political thought and anti-Americanism. Feel free to disagree/call me a prick etc.
What is the United States of America? The simple answer is that it is a geopolitical entity. Fine, but in this context the question means more: what does America stand for? What are its ideals?
Two things come to the fore:
1) the rights and freedoms of the individual
2) free-market capitalism (which could also be defined as the rights and freedoms of the individual business)
In the 20th century, America embraced those ideals and cultivated them more than any other country. Because of that, because of the power of the individual that those ideals unleash, America has become the worlds only hyper-power, commercially, politically, and militarily. In contrast, countries that rejected those ideals have sunk into poverty and chaos, as the energy of the individual was contained and smothered. (For more on this, and how the world is indeed becoming a better, freer place, see The Economist study on Capitalism and Democracy: http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1857618)
Now, it doesn't take too much thinking before you realise that left-wing (Socialist) thought is pretty much diametrically opposed to those two ideals. Instead of the rights and freedoms of the individual, it favours the collective. The State becomes more important than the individual. Instead of the free market, the State controls services and materials, and determines what is and is not permissible in speech, action, commercial activity etc etc. Thus we have, for example, the National Health Service in the UK, a State controlled service to provide universal health care, while "private" services are curtailed. The right and freedom of the individual to offer and accept non-State health services is largely sacrificed in order to promote the collective, as administered by the State. Another example is welfare. The right and freedom of individuals to keep the money they earn is sacrificed by means of taxation to supposedly benefit the collective, as administered by the State, which redistributes this money in the form of handouts.
The ultimate manifestation of left-wing Socialism is Communism, in which all goods, services and activities are controlled by the State, which supposedly represents the collective of society. No-one has rights, and no-one has freedoms.
America stands in contrast to all that, and that's why it draws the ire of the political left, for it stands as the most powerful refutation of their dogma. According to the left, capitalism should fail, yet America's commercial supremacy is based upon free-market capitalism. According to the left, it is necessary for the State to control goods and services for everyone's benefit, yet America has built the most successful companies and the most advanced technologies because individuals were to a great extent uninterfered with by the State. Free-market capitalism (the power of the individual business) has lead to huge advances in medicine and science, and has given the average person a lifestyle undreamed of by our forefathers, yet left-wing thought says that this could not happen, that it is necessary for the State to create this, not individuals. That is also why, when the left looks at America, it sees only the negative. As The Economist says:
For astounding improvements in life expectancy, read population time-bomb. For unparalleled advances in prosperity, read rape of the planet. For eradication of poverty (as once defined) in the industrialised countries, read widening North-South gap. Show us an economic miracle, and we will show you the failure of capitalism.
Their ire is only further compounded by the failure, commercially, politically, even environmentally, of the great Socialist experiments of the twentieth century.
Yet the left-wing will claim that they are exercising their great American freedom of speech, and that those who then call them anti-American are in fact going against American ideals. Forgive me, but I put these protestations on the same level as the Watchtower Society's claims of their cherishment of human rights. It cares for them when it can benefit from them, when it can use the issue as a tool to advance its interests, yet when its goals are achieved, it is quite the opposite, and the human rights of those it controls are of no worth at all. It is true that under extreme right-wing regimes, there is also no freedom or rights. What freedom's were there under Nazism, for example? Yet freedom of speech is far more likely to be curtailed under left-wing regimes, because the left tends toward the control of the individual by the state, whereas the right tends against control of the individual by the state.
This is why I say that to be left-wing is also to be anti-American. America stands for and is built upon ideals that the left refutes. To impose left-wing principles upon America would be to destroy America.
Expatbrit
