Thoughts on European thoughs on America

"Were these actions reflective of a society more serious, more thoughtful, than the one I’d left? Or did they reveal a culture, or at least a media class, that was so awed by America as to be flattered by even its slightest attentions but that was also reflexively, irrationally belligerent toward it?"

Bruce Bawer writes at the Hudson Review.  A tip of the hat to Virginia Postrel for the link.