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The Free American Citizen, 1952:
Our Democracy, Two Years After Korea
- Abstract
The misunderstanding of the United States by Europeans is an old story: indeed it has been the small change of trans-Atlantic conversation for three generations. Yet, as late as two summers ago, a first-hand encounter with it could strike an American editor with the force of. a revelation. This, though his own magazine had long been raising warning signals of the danger for us of the prevailing state of European opinion; and, as a matter of fact, he had gone to Europe as part of a cultural mission aimed at helping ameliorate this very situation. Alas for pride of prophecy. He had been predicting a cold snap: he found himself in the midst of the Blizzard of the Century.
He had plenty of company. Whenever he met his fellow-American plenipotentiaries on the Continent during those July days just after Truman had intervened in Korea—there seemed hundreds of them, economic, technological, and cultural, resident or visiting—he found them in a state of bewildered outrage over the “anti-Americanism” that seemed to beat on them from all sides. It is from those unhappy days that date most of the frantic editorializing, swinging between recrimination and soul-searching, and the hectic spate of programs for better understanding with our allies.
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