WE, THE PEOPLE:

This war is showing the world who we really are (Tony Blankley, March 26, 2003, Jewish World Review)

The American personality might be characterized as an easygoing, sentimental, fair-minded ruthlessness.

We tie yellow ribbons 'round the old oak tree at the same moment we dispatch a wing of B-52s to carpet-bomb the enemy. No murderer in the world gets as many appeals from his conviction as an American murderer. But when we have finished being fair (about the same length of time that a French murderer has to spend in prison before being released), we fry him.

More recently, to show our gentle side, we have taken to killing our murderers with a painless lethal injection. Even amongst our law-abiding citizens, we shock the Europeans with both our generosity and ferocity. We provide for every kid with a pulse to go to college, and then let them sink or swim in the workplace. American workers are lucky to get two weeks of vacation a year, and if an American is out of work, he is, after a few months, out of luck.

In 1996, we repealed the right to welfare payments. Poor people in America have the choice of going to work or going to hell. A few nitwit school boards have outlawed dodgeball: but for most Americans dodgeball is a way of life -- and we aim at the head. Europeans, on the other hand, only permit a fraction of their students to go to college, but then coddle their lazy population with lifetime-guaranteed maintenance and a month and a half of vacation for those who choose to work. Americans consider it a compliment to be called a cowboy. The French take it as an insult.

The current war with Iraq will bring out all these aspects of our national personality. We started by spending six months asking nicely for Saddam to obey the law. When he refused, we asked nicely for our friends to help us enforce the law. When many of them refused, we appealed to their sentiment -- after all, we had helped them out for most of the last century. But when we found out they had a lump of coal where a heart ought to be, we still politely told them we would do it ourselves.

Nothing so clearly defines who we are as when a Tony Blankley, an Andrew Sullivan, a Christopher Hitchens, a Youssef Ibrahim, or a Fouad Ajami refers to "we Americans". Posted by Orrin Judd at March 26, 2003 10:11 AM