It's lonely at the top.

Were I a Kerry voter, though, I'd feel deep anger, not only at them
returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us
all into the same category of moronic muppets. The self-righteous, gun-
totin', military-lovin', sister-marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin',
foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave
America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of
us and make their land "free and strong."
--BRIAN READE, DAILY MIRROR (LONDON), NOVEMBER 5, 2004

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IN the film Superman Returns, Superman Returns, Superman returns--to fight not for "truth, justice, and the American way" but instead for "truth, justice, and all that stuff." In the not so subtle elision from "the American way" to "all that stuff" much peril lies. "The American way" is human and thus imperfect, but the European way leaves you well and truly stuffed, like a dead parrot after a trip to the taxidermist. In the end, hard wars are won on the hardest ground--at home. Whatever changes America makes in its foreign policy and transnational relationships, the home front is critical. You can't win a war of civilizational confidence with a population of nanny-state junkies. Take Brian Reade's list of America deformities--gun-totin', sister-marryin', foreigner-despisin', etc. It goes without saying that that's why I supported Bush in 2004, but I'm not sure it entirely accounts for the other 62,039,073 urinating rednecks. Mr. Reade, though, does usefully enumerate the distinctions that separate the American republic from the rest of the West, differences that will become even more important in the years ahead.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

1. SELF-RIGHTEOUS

Who exactly is being self-righteous here? If you want a public culture that reeks of indestructible faith in its own righteousness, try Europe--especially when they're talking about America: if you disagree with Euroconventional wisdom, you must be an idiot. Or a Nazi. As Oliver James told the Guardian the day after the 2004 U.S. elections, "I was too depressed to even speak this morning. I thought of my late mother, who read Mein Kampf when it came out in the 1930s [sic] and thought, 'Why doesn't anyone see where this is leading?'"

Mr. James is a clinical psychologist and appears to have a bad case of projection. With respect to Mein Kampf, it's Europe that has resurgent anti-Semitism (the French intifada), explicitly racist parties (the British National Party), and neo-Fascists who, if not yet their countries' leaders, have gotten near enough to be in the presidential run-off (Jean-Marie Le Pen) or form part of the governing coalition (Austria).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

2. GUN-TOTIN'

Americans tote guns because they're assertive, self-reliant citizens, not docile subjects of a permanent governing class. At dinner in Paris a couple of years ago, I was asked about "this American sickness with guns."

"Americans have guns," I said, "because a lot of Americans like having guns."

My host scoffed. "A lot of people here would like to have guns too. But they don't."

"Exactly," I said.

3. MILITARY-LOVIN'

What's not to love? Americans take pride in their military on absolute grounds, but, if they were to go all comparative about it, they'd point out there's something contemptible about Europeans preening and posing as a great power when they can't even stop some nickel n' dime Balkan genitalseverers piling up hundreds of thousands of corpses on their borders.

4. SISTER-MARRYIN'

Back to demography: you can't be a redneck in Germany, Spain, or Italy. When the birth rates are 1.1 children per couple, there are no sisters to bunk up with.

5. ABORTION-HATIN'

Is Brian Reade saying he loves it? Abortion is one manifestation of what John Paul II called the reduction of sexuality into an "instrument for self-assertion." Mr. Reade might respond, "Yeah, that's what's so great about it!" But whatever one's tastes in this area, as the pope understood, sex as mere self-assertion is a dead end. If the progressives either abort or decline to conceive their progeny, the progeny of the redneck knuckledraggers will be the only fellows around.

6. GAY-LOATHIN'

More projection. It's Amsterdam where the poor gay guys now have to watch what street they turn down. It's Paris where the gay mayor was stabbed by a gay-loathin' Muslim. Homophobia-wise, America's fundamentalist Christians have nothing on Europe's fundamentalist Muslims.

7. FOREIGNER-DESPISIN' NON-PASSPORT OWNIN'

The only despisin' of foreigners that's going on here seems to be by Europeans toward Americans. Recall Margaret Drabble's diatribe from the beginning of this book. We only skimmed the surface:

  My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed
  me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that
  fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what
  it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world. I can hardly
  bear to see the faces of Bush and Rumsfeld, or to watch their
  posturing body language, or to hear their self-satisfied and
  incoherent platitudes.

Etc. When one examines Brian Reade's anatomy of redneck disfigurements most of them are about the will to survive, as individuals and as a society. If one were to formulate it less disapprovingly, "self-righteous, gun-totin', military-lovin', sister-marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks" equals "culturally confident, self-reliant, patriotic, procreative, religious, democratic, constitutional rednecks who believe in national sovereignty rather than ineffectual poseur multilateralism."

As for Mr. Reade's bit about "the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us"--if it bothers you that much, why not try urinating back? Ah, but in Europe it seems even that simple act is in the process of being feminized. Stehpinkeln--standing while urinating--is disapproved of in Germany, to the point where toilets can now be fitted with voice alarms triggered when the seat is raised. "Hey, stand-peeing is not allowed here and will be punished with fines, so if you don't want any trouble, you'd best sit down," orders the "toilet ghost" in a voice that imitates former chancellor Gerhard Schroder.

The notion of German government leaders commanding you in the privacy of your own home to urinate like a woman seems almost too poignant an image of the peculiarly European blend of state-enforced docility. In contrast to the swaggering Texan cowboy, it's the Last Stand of the EU-Corraled. Yet millions of these devices have been sold and Klaus Schwerma has written a book on the phenomenon called Stehpinkeln: Die Letzte Bastion der Mannlichkeit?--or "Standing Urinators: The Last Bastion of Masculinity?"

This hardly seems the time to open up yet more unbridgeable cultural divides between the Old World and the New. The British TV historian Simon Schama defined the Bush/Kerry divide as "Godly America" and "Worldly America," hailing the latter as "pragmatic, practical, rational, and skeptical"--which is, naturally, exactly the wrong way around: it's the Christian fundamentalists, Holy Rollers, born-again Bible Belters, and Jesus freaks of Godly America who are rational and skeptical, especially of Euro-delusions. It's secular Europe that's living on faith. Uncowed by Islamists, undeferential to government, unshriveled in its birth rates, redneck America is a more reliable long-term bet.

Reprinted with permission. [c] 2006 Regnery Publishing.

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT: In his new book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Mark Steyn finds the U.S. uniquely prepared to survive the clash of civilizations