Glenn Reynolds’ column for the Guardian newspaper makes this observation:
America, and the west in general, has somehow bred a class of elites who think that their own countries, and societies, are presumptively wrong. Hit from outside, their first instincts are to look inward – to conspiracies, or to some sort of flaw that might justify the attacks. Say what you will of the old-time elites, but at least they did not suffer from this vice.
It has been hard for Bush to run a war in the face of this sort of attitude. I think that it will be impossible for Kerry to do so, since it is endemic among many of his strongest supporters.
In one of his essays, George Orwell wrote about those “sophisticated” people in England whose position was that their own country was always wrong, whom he argued were just as rigid and unthinking as those who thought that their own country was always right.
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