U.S. the least self-serving great power in history

The question: "Is Brendan Wolfe a spokesman for the American embassy?" began a letter to the editor in last week's Brock Press. I am sorry to answer that I am not on the payroll of the U.S. State Department, and that the only reward I get for writing these columns is watching people make fools of themselves by writing incoherent letters to the editor. But perhaps a frank appraisal of our neighbour to the south would not be out of place, given the importance of the United States of America to the State of the World.Anti-Americanism is a strong force in the world of today, though the word has two different meanings. The first is that of international relations, where Anti-Americanism denotes the foreign policy doctrines of nations such as France, who seek to elevate themselves by stymieing the United States. This does not concern me. The second is a visceral dislike of American culture and expression, and an unreasonable hatred for U.S. leaders. I believe that such anti-Americanism is counter-productive and harmful.

I share the upper-class Canadian distaste for most of the products of American culture. I cannot abide pop music, am put off by reality TV, and never eat fast food. But unlike cultural protectionists, I recognize that few people, in Canada or the world, agree with me. Most are very content to listen to Britney Spears, watch The Bachelorette (what happened to the word 'spinster'?) and eat at McDonald's. This is because American culture is the culture of democracy, the culture of the common man, of the majority. Governments who seek to oppose U.S. cultural dominance often envision American singers and television producers as the enemy. They are wrong; The "enemy" is their own people, who willingly buy into American cultural products.

American foreign policy has long received an excessive amount of criticism. Yesteryear's spurious moral equivalencies between the tyrannical U.S.S.R. and the democratic U.S. have given way to nonsense that denounces the self-serving nature of America's initiatives.

The U.S. is without question the single least self-serving great power in the history of humankind. No other nation of comparable strength has refrained from conquering large sections of the world, or has demonstrated such wholehearted willingness to help the less fortunate. The U.S. is the world's largest donor of foreign aid: Millions of the impoverished around the world depend upon it for sustenance, and are not disappointed.

The U.S., through the judicious use of its military might, has been the great guarantor of freedom for the past 60 years. America was instrumental in the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. It remained steadfast throughout the Cold War, preserving the peoples of Western Europe from enslavement, and eventually by its resolve rescuing the oppressed of Poland, Czechoslovakia and other nations too numerous to name from Communism's grip.

Western civilization, which bequeathed individual liberty to the world, is under attack in our times, not by the entirety of another civilization, but by a deranged, tyrannical fragment. Dictators in Iraq, North Korea and Iran, and oppressors such as Osama and Arafat hope to prevent the spread of freedom from our society to their own. Meanwhile, misguided fifth-columnists are at work within the West, such as those organizing massive demonstrations against the U.S. liberation of Iraq. The U.S. is the unquestioned leader in the fight to preserve the free, Western way of life, and to extend it to all who desire liberty. As long as this remains the case, I will back them to the hilt.