If Foreigners Could Vote in the 08 USA Elections

This recent article in the Wall Street Journal with the headline above reminded me about some observations on European friends and erstwhile allies that startled me the first time I noted them in the early 70s.

A little introductory material may be helpful here: I am the son of a butcher/politician and Carol is the daughter of a cheesemaker. Both of us came of age in a small village in south-central Wisconsin in the 1950s. Our high school English teacher, Mrs Mahr, one of only a few Catholics allowed in the village of Hustisford, thought us reasonably sophisticated enough to recommend that we read Patrick Dennis's Auntie Mame a year or so after it came out in 1955. Why she thought it wasn't suitable for the others I shall never know.

I went on to study chemistry at Carroll College, a small liberal-arts college just outside of Milwaukee, as a way of preparing to go to medical school. Fortunately Dr Folsom, at that time one of three English professors on campus, delighted in my quick understanding of "country matters" in his 300 level Shakespeare class. I was the only non-major in the class and must have been already admitted to medical school as I didn't worry much about a good grade in the class. He even gave me a special exam as he didn't think it fair to ask question comparing and contrasting S with other authors I had not been forced to read because of my major.

Although I don't remember specifically discussing the matter of Truth, I suspect that almost all my teachers in high school and college believed that there was such a thing as Truth, and that one of the principal functions of education was seeking Truth. And thus it never occurred to me to think otherwise.

In the late 60s and early 70s physicians were subject to the draft just like everyone else. I was sent to a laboratory at Scott AFB in the middle of a lot of cornfields in southern Illinois, when I came across a short note in a USAF publication about an exchange position as a pathologist with Her Majesty Elizabeth II's Royal Air Force. I didn't consult with Carol about this matter and so we arrived at RAF Halton's Institute of Pathology and Tropical Medicine in August 1972.

I started reading British & continental newspapers, and talking with friends and acquaintances. I was startled to discover how much they paid attention to what was going on in the USA. What they paid attention to was usually fairly embarrassing. I don't remember if they knew we American commoners did not pay any attention to what was going on in Europe or anywhere else in the world before or after WWII unless we were recent immigrants or stationed there to dissuade our erstwhile allies, and now our sworn enemies, the Communists of the Soviet Union, from taking over any more of Europe than they had already helped themselves to. Our British hosts were usually kind and tolerant of our American ways. Although our US geography classes always regarded the British Isles as part of Europe, in those days I met more than a few Englishmen and Scots who thought and said that the "Wogs" (which I learned was an acronym for "wily oriental gentleman") began at Calais!

And while traveling around England and the continent we found a surprising amount of anti-Jewish sentiment, except maybe for a few Danes and fewer Italians. And we fat and dumb Americans had thought it was just those nasty Nazis that were at fault for The Holocaust. The Germans were particularly miffed for taking the blame for putting into action the logical consequence of what most of Europe was thinking. As for anti-American feelings, those were usually obscured in the form of jokes. So that European sense of superiority over us benighted colonialists coupled with an intense interest in the details of what we Americans were up to, and a persistent anti-Jewish way of thinking, though seldom out loud, were surprising to us. And they still are. Not only surprising but puzzling too as we thought there would be some lingering gratitude because the USA had come to the aid of England and France and Germany.

By the way, in case anyone is interested in the continuing presence of Fascism in these latter days, you could do worse than sample some of Jonah Goldberg's recent book, pictured above with terrible lighting, for which I apologize.