over 40% of Canadian teens think America is "evil"

[Heathcliff]

http://www.torontofreepress.com/2004/weinreb063004.htm

Politically Incorrect
Poll: over 40% of Canadian teens think America is "evil"
by Arthur Weinreb

June 30, 2004

Can West News Services, owners of several Canadian newspapers including the National Post as well as the Global Television Network commissioned a series of polls to determine how young people feel about the issues that were facing the country’s voters. Dubbed "Youth Vote 2004", the polls, sponsored by the Dominion Institute and Navigator Ltd. were taken with a view to getting more young people involved in the political process.

In one telephone poll of teens between the ages of 14 and 18, over 40 per cent of the respondents described the United States as being "evil". That number rose to 64 per cent for French Canadian youth.

This being Canada, the amount of anti-Americanism that was found is not surprising. What is significant is the high number of teens who used the word "evil" to describe our southern neighbour. As Misty Harris pointed out in her column in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, evil is usually associated with serial killers and "kids who tear the legs off baby spiders." These teens appear to equate George W. Bush and Americans with Osama bin Laden and Hitler, although it is unknown if the teens polled would describe the latter two as being evil. Whether someone who orders planes to be flown into heavily populated buildings would fit that description would make a good subject for a future poll.

The Liberal government came into power in 1993 gushing anti-Americanism. Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s communications director, Francoise Ducros, made headlines when she referred to President Bush as a moron. Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish was picked up on a boom microphone saying, "Damn Americans — I hate those bastards". Not only did Parrish not apologize for her remarks, but she later appeared on a television show hosted by alleged comedian Mike Bullard and laughed about the incident. Parrish played to the anti-Americanism of the youthful studio audience by saying that she couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t do it again.

Not only did then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien not take any action against his staff or caucus members, he himself engaged in America-bashing. The depth of his anti-Americanism surfaced shortly after the 9/11 attacks when he blamed the arrogance and greed of the West (read the United States) for those attacks.

When Paul Martin assumed office last December, the childish cheap shots ended but, if anything, anti-Americanism became stronger.

Anti-Americanism played a prominent role in the election strategy of the Liberals. Paul Martin portrayed himself as the saviour of Canadian medicare while saying that if Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada came to power they would introduce "American-style" health care. Martin was happy to take credit for cutting taxes and eliminating the deficit during the 1990s when he was Minister of Finance, but he referred to tax cuts included in the Conservative Party platform as being "American-style tax cuts". Canadians who favour lower taxes or the private delivery of health care services or smaller governments or anything similar to what is found in the United States were called "un-Canadian" by Paul Martin.

It is therefore not surprising that a high percentage of Canadian youth think that the United States is evil. Nor is it surprising that this feeling is more pronounced in Quebec where Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe said that he would rather live under the United Nations than the Stars and Stripes. The left wing Canadian political parties, aided by their supporters in the elite media don’t seem to be able to say anything positive about Canada without denigrating the United States in the process.

The poll results reflect that anti-Americanism will be solidly entrenched in future generations of Canadians. As well as listening to the propaganda espoused by their political leaders and the media, these kids have no experience with what constitutes real evil. They live in a country that much like pre-9/11 America, thinks that terrorist attacks are something that happens in other countries. And as the World War II veterans slowly die off, they have no conviction of the evil that the allies risked their lives to defeat.

With anti-Americanism playing such a prominent role in this past election campaign, it is no wonder that the United States was viewed in such a negative light.

Arthur Weinreb, a lawyer and author, is Associate Editor of Toronto Free Press and Canadafreepress.com. He can be reached at: aweinreb@interlog.com
Copyright © 2004 Canada Free Press


Gee, I wonder what they think about Israel....

[JackSpratts]

Review

HISTORY LESSONS
How Textbooks From Around the World Portray U.S. History.
By Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward.
404 pp. The New Press. $26.95.



'History Lessons': Goodbye, Columbus
Daniel Swift

HAD you gone to high school in Norway, your textbook would have taught you Columbus was old news: the most important arrival in America was the Viking Leif Ericson's in the early 10th century. If, on the other hand, you'd spent your teenage years in Cuba, you'd have learned that when Columbus discovered Cuba, he thought it was the promised land and didn't want to go any farther. These and other extracts in ''History Lessons: How Textbooks From Around the World Portray U.S. History'' tell us two things: historical narratives are biased and untrustworthy; and America's impact on the world cannot be underestimated.

Interesting history is interested history, so the secondary school texts excerpted here generally relate international events as they reflect local concerns. French textbooks recount the Suez Canal crisis of 1956 through the prism of growing nationalism in their own troublesome colony, Algeria. Caribbean textbooks are sugar-centric, gauging the effects of the Monroe Doctrine and the Great Depression on sugar prices. The Canadians, meanwhile, rarely miss an opportunity to insert their own countrymen into global events: ''the sky above Juno Beach was to be protected by R.A.F. bombers, many of which were flown by Canadian bomber crews''; ''most Canadians are unaware of the crucial role Canada played in the development of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.''

Much entertainment is to be found in what's excluded and included. An excerpt from a British textbook on the American Revolution snootily refers to ''the colonies'' -- as in, ''the colonies did not have uniforms, men or money'' -- and notes that Tom Paine, the author of ''Common Sense'' and godfather of America, ''earned a living first as a maker of ladies' underwear.'' Compare that coy little fact to the reverential treatment of Paine in American textbooks like ''A People and a Nation'' (where Paine is ''a radical English printer'' who called ''stirringly for independence'') or ''The Great Republic'' (where he ''belonged to no country'' and ''lived by his pen.'')

Dana Lindaman, a graduate student at Harvard, and Kyle Ward, an assistant professor of history and political science at Vincennes University, assert that ''History Lessons'' is a comparative study offering a corrective to the ''isolationist tendency'' of American textbooks. ''If we wish to move beyond judgment and toward understanding, we must honestly consider other perspectives,'' they write, making the now ubiquitous gesture to Sept. 11.

But their brief editorial introductions to the excerpts are anything but honest. Lindaman and Ward reductively describe 15th- and 16th-century exploration as motivated by ''the European desire for riches during the Renaissance period''; the profit margin was certainly on Columbus's mind, but as a Jamaican textbook notes, the first waves of European colonists came to convert as well as plunder. The final section of ''History Lessons'' quotes a French textbook on ''A New World Order'': Lindaman and Ward's description of France as ''an imperial power eclipsed by the United States after WWI,'' which ''has struggled with the reality of a U.S.-dominated world'' shades into the worst of lazy American anti-French sentiment.

Even as they have produced a book that suggests all tellings of history are biased, the editors refuse to examine their own preconceptions. Consider the Spanish-American war: the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Bay in 1898 prompted American intervention in the Spanish-Cuban War and eventual occupation of Cuba. American textbooks conventionally describe the explosion as either a Spanish attack or an accident; a Cuban textbook quoted here insists the Americans blew up their own boat in order to justify their invasion. The excerpt is introduced with a brief note: ''No history book of this scope is published in Cuba without the government's explicit approval. Of particular interest is the conspiracy theory of the U.S.S. Maine's explosion.''

In treating the Cuban argument so offhandedly, Lindaman and Ward diminish the valuable lessons of their own shocking and fascinating book. A central motif in the excerpts is American foul play. A Saudi Arabian textbook suggests that all American intervention in the Middle East -- peace plans, oil deals -- have been part of a continuing war on Islam. The Cuban textbook also accuses the United States of spreading crop diseases though Cuba in the 1980's. An Iranian textbook describes the hostage crisis of 1979 as a popular reaction against an American conspiracy to undermine Ayatollah Khomeini and reinstate the shah, who had taken refuge in the United States.

These may be conspiracy theories, or they may hold some traces of truth. But either way, neither ''History Lessons'' nor the United States can afford to dismiss the ways the rest of the world sees America, and how America is represented to young people in schools.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/bo.../04SWIFTL.html
Daniel Swift writes regularly for The Times Literary Supplement in London.