Battered Europe Syndrome
From yesterday's Best of the Web:
World War II left Europe owing an incalculable moral debt to both America and the Jews: America because it saved Europe from its own savagery, Jews because they were the primary victims of that savagery. European anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are often hard to tell apart, and it may be because they both reflect a self-loathing aspect of the European psyche--a neurotic need to compensate for an overwhelming sense of historical guilt.Indeed, most Americans' reaction to European anti-Americanism is the instinctive retort: "Those ungrateful bastards." Perhaps the European impetus for this state of mind comes from a visceral sense of moral superiority: "Why do they think they deserve gratitude in the first place?"
One can almost hear the self-deceiving follow-up:"Were things really so bad before they invited themselves in?" The last time I heard that, it came from an abused wife on Cops.
