[HedgeYourBets]

http://www.shalem.org.il/azure/18-berlinski.htm

A great review of a book by Jean-Francois Revel; "Anti-Americanism".

Berlinkski covers Revels criticism of America's critics. A recommended read.

Now, at the age of 80, Revel has issued Anti-Americanism, a mordant denunciation of the United States’ most full-throated critics. The book has been a best-seller in France, indicating that the French, however inclined they may appear toward animus toward the United States, are at least willing to consider the opposing case. This must be reckoned good news.

Revel’s career has been most notable for his revival of a neglected literary form, the political pamphlet. The genre had met with disfavor in France, associated as it was with the right-wing tracts of the 1930s, but it is Revel’s natural medium: His short, punchy essays feature pyrotechnic polemics, vigorous mockery of his opponents, and a delightful willingness to offend. They are not, however, serious endeavors to convert the nonbeliever, nor do they attempt to be. Anti-Americanism is a pamphlet in this style, a short, sharp, delicious, but ultimately insubstantial essay in which Revel explores anti-American sentiment and endeavors to demonstrate that it has few rational or objective foundations. Observing the anti-American passion that has swept the globe since September 11, he finds it to be a miasma of fantasy, internal contradiction, and self-righteousness.

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Revel concludes that the danger of anti-Americanism is its tendency to produce exactly the outcome it most fears: “The often extravagant ravings of anti-American hatred, the media imputations—sometimes the product of incompetence, sometimes of mythomania—the opinionated ill will that puts the United States in an unfavorable light at every turn, can only confirm for Americans the uselessness of consultation. The result is the exact opposite of what is sought…. And so America’s confused enemies and allies alike, valuing animosity over influence, condemn themselves to impotence—and thus, in effect, strengthen the country they claim to fear.”