JIM BENNETT LOOKS AT THE ROOT CAUSES OF ANTI-AMERICANISM:

However, it is worth considering the possibility that the root source of anti-Americanism in the world lies in the deep-rooted anti-modern tradition of Continental Europe.

Just as the Baathist movement lately of Iraq and still in power in Syria is a localized variant of European fascism, the broader anti-Americanism currently fashionable on all continents comes ultimately from what some have called the Industrial Counter-Revolution. This is a comprehensive category for the various reactions in Europe against the program of the Industrial and Democratic Revolutions, or liberalism in the classical sense — individualism, free markets, and technological and social progress.

Yep. They’re not just exporting inferior weapons and military strategies, but bad politics, too. Bennett, however, echoes one of my longstanding worries about Europe:

In considering the Holocaust, most attention has been given to its direct victims, as is appropriate. However, we must also consider that it was a form of self-administered lobotomy for Continental European culture.

It would not be surprising if the twin anti-modernist themes of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, now rapidly coalescing into a single nasty mess visible in many of the pro-Saddam demonstrations of the past year, become once again the predominant political-cultural theme in Western Continental Europe, overwhelming the decent and positive forces there that had previously prevailed.

This is a disturbing possibility, and I don’t see any easy answer for it. How do you reverse a lobotomy?