In the end, anti-Americanism boils down to the timeless disgust with America's daring to export its idea of liberty to the four corners of the globe. Whether via gunboat diplomacy, realpolitik, humanitarian intervention, or the current blend of preemptive strikes and trade liberalization -- despite intermittent rollbacks at the behest of groaning industrial-age unions and its John Edwards demagogues -- it is anathema to the Old World mind (and its Rousseauean influence in the New World) that a nation would choose to pursue other than parochial mercantilist interests. This is why French companies violated the sanctions against post-Gulf War Iraq while the chattering class decried the Yankee drive to trade blood for oil. It is why Vladimir Putin is a supposedly faithful partner in the war against Islamic terrorism while selling nuclear reactors to Iran. And it is the reason that, unfortunately, Europeans consider the United States to be the second-most dangerous country in the world -- second only to the sole democracy in the Middle East.

To oversimplify the point, Europeans (like New Yorkers) are cynical, and cannot comprehend the "shining city upon a hill." They can't help it; their Enlightenment was essentially French and positivistic, rather than Scottish and natural law-oriented. Still, it is amusing to observe the simultaneous attacks on America from what roughly corresponds to the political left and right, for being an insufficient promoter of "social justice" while reveling too much in proletarian culture. Such is the paradox of this irrational anti-Americanism.