Mark Steyn writes that the world should be thankful for America:

...Americans aren't novelty junkies on the important things. The New World is one of the oldest settled constitutional democracies on Earth, to a degree the Old World can barely comprehend. Where it counts, Americans are traditionalists.

We know Eastern Europe was a totalitarian prison until the Nineties, but we forget that Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal) has democratic roots going all the way back until, oh, the mid-Seventies; France and Germany's constitutions date back barely half a century, Italy's only to the 1940s, and Belgium's goes back about 20 minutes, and currently it's not clear whether even that latest rewrite remains operative. The U.S. Constitution is not only older than France's, Germany's, Italy's or Spain's constitution, it's older than all of them put together.

Americans think of Europe as Goethe and Mozart and 12th century castles and 6th century churches, but the Continent's governing mechanisms are no more ancient than the Partridge Family. Aside from the Anglophone democracies, most of the nation-states in the West have been conspicuous failures at sustaining peaceful political evolution from one generation to the next, which is why they're so susceptible to the siren song of Big Ideas – communism, fascism, European Union.

If you're going to be novelty-crazed, better the zebra-mussel cappuccino than the Third Reich.

...So Americans should be thankful they have one of the last functioning nation-states. Europeans, because they've been so inept at exercising it, no longer believe in national sovereignty, whereas it would never occur to Americans not to. This profoundly different attitude to the nation-state underpins, in turn, Euro-American attitudes to transnational institutions such as the United Nations.

But on this Thanksgiving the rest of the world ought to give thanks to American national sovereignty, too. When something terrible and destructive happens – a tsunami hits Indonesia, an earthquake devastates Pakistan – the United States can project itself anywhere on the planet within hours and start saving lives, setting up hospitals and restoring the water supply.

Aside from Britain and France, the Europeans cannot project power in any meaningful way anywhere. When they sign on to an enterprise they claim to believe in – shoring up Afghanistan's fledgling post-Taliban democracy – most of them send token forces under constrained rules of engagement that prevent them doing anything more than manning the photocopier back at the base.

RTWT.

Whoops, clearly youre quoting, apologies.

I agree completely that the world should be extremely thankful to the US but the frankly idiotic way Mark Steyn goes about describing it is more likely to make people both outside and inside the US turn away in disgust. At least it disgusts me and I'm far more pro-US than at least 95% of norwegians (our constitution is from 1814 by the way).

I would have expected better from Steyn.

What an arrogant piece of drivel.

An "arrogant piece of drivel" from a Canadian, Offsides...

HH, I suspect that the tone you object to is an overreaction to much more disgusting anti-Americanism coming from people much more arrogant than Steyn.

Shorter Offside: "arrogant drivel" = true

Bit of a mashup on the math: "Three hundred and 14 years ago, the Pilgrims thanked God ..." seems to be a result of thinking it was three centuries back from the 20th and then adding 14 to '07 to get 1621. Since we're in the 21st century and are 14 years short of the quadracentennial (tetracentennial?), the correct figure would be 386 years.

No Rand I don't think so. I think my previous comment was an overly polite understatement; some of what Steyn writes is simply extremely insulting and particularly so to the memory of those not from the US who have died fighting alongside the US, or by simply supporting the US in some manner.

In his defense I don't think Steyn realizes (although he probably should).

American arrogance again!

On the subject of working societies that stay that way; I just looked it up - the English civil war finished in 1651, over a hundred years before the USA existed. Since then, we have certainly had our problems - but the political evolution has been peaceful. Not to mention that Britain created the world's largest democracy - and also dragged it up from a collection of mediaeval princedoms to a cohesive state, in the process. I refer of course to India.

And what did the Americans do, in a similar situation, with the Native Americans? Simple. They either herded them into reservations on the worst of the land - or just killed them.

Sure, Britain is past its best. Maybe that's because it's fought off a tyranny large and more powerful than itself for two or more years - three times.

Fletcher Christian: The British rule of India isn't exactly the rose-tinted era you make it out to be. And it isn't anything like the situation with the Native Americans (not to excuse what the US did back then).

Nonetheless, since Steyn makes such a show of ignoring the British in his comparison of the US to Europe (which was obviously so he wouldn't have to deal with the sorts of questions you bring up), it would have made sense for him to add some paragraphs honoring/giving thanks for our cousins across the puddle. =)

Nonetheless, since Steyn makes such a show of ignoring the British in his comparison of the US to Europe (which was obviously so he wouldn't have to deal with the sorts of questions you bring up), it would have made sense for him to add some paragraphs honoring/giving thanks for our cousins across the puddle. =)

Actually, what Steyn is primarily guilty of is overgeneralizing, by lumping all of Europe together. Certainly what he writes applies to some of Europe. And I don't think that he considers the UK properly part of Europe--he assigns it culturally (and correctly, IMO) to the Anglosphere. "Europe" in his parlance is not a continent, but a certain continental attitude.