American Power

The number of people in the world who take issue with American exceptionalism and American power are many and varied. They seem to come from all walks of life and live in many countries around the world, some even complaining here at home while sleeping safe in their beds because of it. The root of this view seems, in my opinion, to be planted in western Europe- where vast cadres of intellectuals in their walled off libraries and ivory towers write their idiocies while completely protected from the intrusions of reality.

This pisses me off on so many levels I find it hard to enumerate them all.

To understand anything, one must begin by understanding the history and origins of the thing; and American power, with all its wailing and whining enemies in Europe has a very interesting history indeed.

Let's look back to the early 20th century as before that time America, though vast in land and rich in resources, was not a real power to be reckoned with. By mid-century it was a superpower with military influence in every corner of the globe. So what happened?

Short answer? Those European intellectual's forbears happened. In terms of size, the American military was 17th in the world prior to WWII, in terms of size against population and area defended we ranked with around 50th. But in Europe trouble was brewing in the form of a disaffected nation still reeling from the consequences of the aggression it displayed, a nation with a highly educated workforce, keen engineering minds and great and growing anger over the penalties imposed upon it's citizens for the crimes of it's leaders.

Throughout western Europe, there was a general hue and cry, as Hitler's forces swept through the nations, of appeasement- peace at any cost, withdrawal, and general abdication of the responsibilities any powerful nation naturally must shoulder. By the time those intelligentsia were proven idealistic and suicidally naive the last remaining democratic power in Europe was Great Britain.

And still, we stayed away.

We suffered casualties by German U-boats and Japanese ships. Still we stayed out of the war. We sent material aid to Britain, our former enemy, but took no military action.

Only when directly attacked, when the world was on the brink and the free peoples of all nations sounded a cry for aid did we join the war. We turned our industries to war, sent our sons to die for them, created military technologies the world had never seen; not only for our own nation did we go but for the survival of human dignity in the face of an implacable enemy. And together, we won.

And the world took a nap.

Those once mighty nations had grown tired of war, of keeping the peace in far off places, and so they left a vacuum of power the world had not seen since the fall of Rome. The world had a new choice of powers: the totalitarian state of U.S.S.R. or the Republic called America. As abandoned nations cried out for help against the new Soviet onslaught American power, made possible and necessary by European indolence, came to be.

So whine, complain, tear out your hair in frustration all you who believe that Europe has the answer in their lesez faire foreign policy and massive welfare state. Just know that it is because we took up the mantle of responsibility that they shirked that allowed them to become so comfortably insignificant to their former glory.

The day may come, and soon, America too will cast off that heavy load and go quietly into the night. But know that nature abhors a vacuum and ask yourself this: Who would you have take our place?