Hating America, hating humanity: yup, that's what they do--especially the intellectuals.

ANTI-AMERICANISM is a phenomenon which, though common and ubiquitous, is difficult to explain because it is illogical, irrational, contradictory, and mysteriously primitive. A good deal of it is parroting. And, oddly enough, a parrot has recently emerged in England which may cast light on the subject. This bird had been owned by a long-distance truck driver who emigrated, bequeathing it to a bird sanctuary. There it behaved well; but there were exceptions. In succession, a local mayor, wearing his chain of office, a police inspector, and a female vicar--all visitors to the sanctuary--were subjected to four-letter verbal abuse. The manager of the place eventually concluded that the parrot had been trained by its owner to abuse authority figures, and recognized them by something distinctive in their dress.

The United States, in a lawless and dangerous world where the U.N. cannot impose order--in fact sometimes makes disorder worse--has become a reluctant authority figure, a stepfather or foster parent to a dysfunctional and violent family. As such, it is resented and abused, all the more so since it wears the uniform of its role, the ability to project military power in overwhelming strength almost everywhere in the world. The fact that, in logic, America's critics may be grateful to a nation which, in the past as in the present, has been essential to their liberty and well-being by resisting and overcoming totalitarianism, or suppressing threats to civil society by terrorism, makes no difference to the resentment; may even intensify it.

The people among whom anti-Americanism is most rife, who articulate it and set the tone of the venom, are the intellectuals. They ought logically to hold America in the highest regard, for none depend more completely on the freedom of speech and writing which America upholds, or would suffer more grievously if the enemies against whom America struggles were to triumph and rule or misrule the world. Indeed, many of the most violently anti-American intellectuals benefit directly and personally from America's existence, since their books, plays, music, and other creations enjoy favor on the huge American market, and dollar royalties form a large part of their income. But it is a fact that intellectuals are fundamentally and incorrigibly antinomian. To them, authority, especially if legitimate and benign, is the enemy-in-chief, to be resisted instinctively as a threat to their "freedom," even if such authority ultimately makes it possible. You might think that some of these intellectuals--British, French, German for instance-who have been particularly abusive of the U.S. would renounce their American royalties. But not one has done so. When I put this point to a leading author, famous alike for his American following and his anti-American views, I was sharply told: "I regard such gestures as childishly quixotic."

Not only among intellectuals but among a much wider circle, anti-Americanism has a tone of outraged morality which strikes me as peculiarly perverse. It is notable among those, particularly in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, who profess concern for the well-being of the world (as opposed to the national interest of their countries). These "lovers of humanity" are peculiarly anti-American. Yet what is the United States? It is, so far, the world's only unqualified success in building on the largest possible scale a multiracial society. Every culture in the world is represented in the U.S., usually in considerable numbers. To take in the peoples of the world is not only a U.S. tradition but a current and future reality. Some of the most successful U.S. communities--the Koreans, the Lebanese, the Vietnamese, and the Cubans--are quite recent creations. Immigration from all over our planet is a major factor in pushing America's population over the 300 million mark and, according to the latest projection, will raise U.S. population to 420 million by mid-century. America comes much closer to the realization of world brother-and-sisterhood than that corrupt and soulless abstraction, the United Nations. Indeed the United States is a practical and on the whole prosperous and contented celebration of the essential unity of the planet. To hate America is thus not to hate a particular nation as such, but to hate humanity. And of course it is a melancholy fact that many intellectuals do hate the human race. My definition of an intellectual is someone who thinks ideas matter more than people.

In this confused spasm of irrationality which is anti-Americanism, there is a process of personification which has currently settled on the necessarily lonely figure of George W. Bush. He is much hated among the European intelligentsia, and there are frequent calls for his prosecution as a war criminal, especially among those who took the mass atrocities of a Saddam Hussein or a Pol Pot with equanimity, not to say indifference. And the reason for this is simple, and much to Mr. Bush's credit: To an anti-American, he is the archetype, the quintessential American. He is Mr. America, America personified, even caricatured. He brings out all the envy, fear, and emotional anxiety which lies at the root of the anti-American disease. He is good-looking, upright, a Texan, a man of wealth and self-assurance. He is not by nature talkative, does not articulate abstract thoughts or concern himself with fine distinctions. He sees the world in black-and-white terms, with clear and absolute differences between good and evil, right and wrong. He worships God. He is a Ten Commandments man. He does not meet trouble halfway and is slow to anger, but when roused his anger is terrible and enduring. His personal life centers around the family, an institution European intellectuals view with unease and marked qualifications, not to say distaste. He does not dance effortlessly on the sacramental turf of the campus, or fit into the smoke-filled culture of the basement cafe, or find books axiomatically preferable to the saddle. Does he read poetry to relax, or study philosophy as a hobby, or worship Picasso? No. All this adds up to a terrible indictment.

Mr. Bush enables the more bigoted and inveterate anti-Americans-those for whom anti-Americanism is a culture, almost a way of life--to concentrate their feelings on a real-life actual hate figure. Bush is exactly what the clinical-case anti-American believes the average American is, must be, and, in the weird logic of demonology, ought to be. The Americans elected him. Well, they would, wouldn't they? He is America. Anti-Americanism and Bush hatred are part of the same paranoid emotion. But the obverse is also true. In a difficult time, Bush is America's natural leader.

Mr. Johnson's latest book is George Washington: The Founding Father.