Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America by Andrei S. Markovits

Review By Louis Flores

I first learned from my best friend, Randy, about the shootings at Virginia Tech. His e-mail alert framed the shooting around his forecast for the European headlines the shootings were going to make in Germany. This was worrisome -- not because Randy's first thought was about our nation's public relations in Europe instead of concern over the dead and their survivors -- but because Randy was right to worry about the European headlines. Yes, everyone was going to feel sorry for the victims and the survivors of the shoot-out; that was a given. But immediately, Randy began to try to give this shooting some context: Our self-inflicted national disaster was going to reinforce our own self-inflicted international disaster.

The prejudice that some Europeans have about the extremisms in our form of society and government are summarized as the "American way," what, for example, the French call "à l'Americaine." What if, for a minute, we did not look at the "American way" as a prejudice, but as an observation?

In Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America, Andrei S. Markovits, a distinguished professor at the University of Michigan, examines the recent spread of an anti-American sensibility within Europe. Progressives in the United States can agree that a certain responsibility for the inflation of anti-Americanism can be traced to the totalitarian and hypocritical foreign and domestic policies of the current Bush administration. But let's set that aside for the moment. In respect of the Virginia Tech massacre, and its intersection with the European anti-American sensibility, let's focus on the persistent, unchangeable, reckless gun promotion policy of the United States. (The gun promotion policy, which President Bush has said needs no change is the same gun promotion policy, which has been left unchanged for some time.) So, let's not also single out President Bush, yet.

In the April 30th issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik made the case that now is precisely the time to find a way to "treat" the social disease created by our domestic gun promotion policy. (We'll save for a later conversation the subject of what social diseases we create from our international gun promotion policy). Mr. Gopnik singled out the leadership and critical thinking limitations of the Virgina governor, who tried to shut down the necessary conversation, which we must have, in order to go beyond "healing" this most recent tear in our social fabric and reach some kind of "treatment." Mr. Gopnik's essay addressed the continuing confusion among the American citizenry, which goes along the lines of, "Why do these kinds of mass, mad public killings keep happening, over and over again, in America?" Naturally, for some unbiased perspective, Mr. Gopnik turned to anecdotal evidence outside the United States for some answers.

In Europe, Mr. Gopnik wrote, the reaction of nations, where similar mass shootings have occurred, has been some form of either gun-control legislation or honest public dialogue about gun-control. In contrast, in America, following this latest incident of domestic gun violence, politicians are trying to clamp down on any conversation even approaching the possibility of gun-control. Consequently, the larger conversation being broadcast by the mainstream media has been about every subject except gun-control, such as the need for making available mental illness treatments on college campuses, according to the CNN report I saw one recent morning, for example.

In the context of Mr. Markovits's book, the gun problem in America is seen by Europeans as a function of our extreme systems of society and government. Mr. Markovits's argument is that without further specificity, this kind of criticism -- like other generalizations, which collectively form "anti-Americanism" -- merely rises to a form of a prejudice. Simply calling the conditions, which give rise to the relentless and repeated gun violence in the United States, "American conditions," for example, gives no access to any truth, which could give people power to address the problem of gun violence.

But in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech tragedy, we can see some specificity, that which is withholding power from citizens from addressing the problem of gun violence: It is the censorship of our national conversation. That is what is keeping us from addressing the problem caused by gun violence.

Somewhere in the literature, there is a test, which describes, in layman's terms, the state of insanity. It goes: "Do you do the same thing, over and over again, each time expecting a different result?" Only someone (or a society), who (which) is insane, would keep doing the same thing, over and over again, each time expecting a different result.

Americans must be crazy to think that its citizens and leaders could create a different solution -- maybe even a solution that would work -- to the problem of gun violence -- if we keep allowing politicians to let us have the same muted and censored conversation. When are we going to realize that politicians would rather drape 32 more coffins with the American flag than to allow us to have a free and unrestricted conversation about gun violience, a conversation that would include having a discussion about the need for gun-control? When are we going to stop listening to the same, tired record?

What if we allowed ourselves to have a different conversation about gun violence, a conversation which would include having a discussion about the need for gun-control? What would be a result of having a different conversation? Would a different result become possible, if we would have a different conversation? If only we could break out of our cycle of doing the same thing, over and over again! But how?

Uncouth Nation provides us the kind of necessary feedback we need to see outselves behaving in a pattern, but only if we can look past the generalizations of "anti-Americanism." While the premise of Mr. Markovits's book is to expose and dispel the consequences of these negative generalizations of Americans is admirable, what he too quickly glances past is that there might be some insight for us to experience about ourselves, if we could only see how we as Americans are coming across to people in other cultures.

In terms of gun violence in our society, for example, we can choose to talk about college students, who may indeed need mental help, but we don't see that collectively the conversation the entire citizenry is having about gun violence needs some mental help. Maybe when the French, for example, use the pejorative, "à l'Americaine," the sensibility that they are honing in on about America is really insanity. Perhaps one of the "American conditions" that frightens the Germans is really the "condition" called insanity. The stubbornness that American politicians display after incidences of gun violence, for example, after Vice President Dick Cheney shot his hunting partner in the face -- by refusing to talk about gun-control -- is precisely what is keeping us from having a different conversation, and possibly a different result. Instead, as Mr. Gopnick wrote, we'll keep worrying about the same thing, waiting for our politicians to give us the same answer, which has never worked in the past, and yet which we keep expecting will work some day in the future, and which, in the end, if we were sane, we would know was no answer at all.

Buy Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (The Public Square) on Amazon.com.