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PARTISAN REVIEW
citizens, who cannot seem to grasp that individuals arc closely watched
and that their behavior, including the most intimate acts, is minutely reg–
ulated.
In
America, critics say, even the slightest departure from pre–
scribed rules is punished.
In
this interpretation, America is an Orwellian,
totalitarian barrack-a carbon copy of the former Soviet Union. This
new brand of anti-Americanism has not developed due
to
a
lack
of
knowledge about the true nature of the country, but because of the
stereotypes emerging in response to evolving political trends.
During a visit to a NATO-sponsored conference in Bled, Slovenia,
even those who were supposedly benefiting from the American presence
sporred this new anti-Americanism. The differing interpretations of
NATO's role in regard to Russia among memhers of small, Balkan
nations came as no surprise. What was surprising, however, was the
nature of the sentiments. Historically, Europeans, especially the rrench,
have resented Americans for their military might and for what they per–
ceive as America's desire to dominate Europe. (In a sense, Europeans
approach America in the same manner Eastern Europeans perceived the
U.S.S.R. at the time of the Warsaw Pact.) For example, there are com–
plaints that American culture is cheap and shallow and is slowly replac–
ing ancient, sophisticated European cultural traditions. After all, de
Gaulle already sought to reinvent Europe, but Europeans never ques–
tioned that both continents belonged
to
the same Western civilization.
America might have been perceived as a rather provincial part of that
civil iza tion, but a mem ber nonetheless. And non-America ns rega rded
America as a free country, albeit one without inhihitions. The stereotvpe
juxta posed ind ividualistic, rude, a nd prom iscuous America
to
prudish,
regimented, and restrained Europe.
However, some believe that the United States is not a truly free soci–
ety because of the way in which democracy evolves and changes. The
notion that democracy can lead
to
restraints on individual liberty vvas
not on the minds of the majority of European intellectuals at the time of
the American Revolution, which is often regarded as the ideological
inspiration for the French Revolution, at least in its liberal stage. Yet by
the beginning of the nineteenth century, a new vision of America had
begun to emerge. And the same Frenchman who had been fascinated
with American democracy a few generations earlier espoused it.
Alexis de Tocqueville a lready stated that the development of full
democracy in America had led
to
a state where personal freedom was
compromised by the power of the majority. This theory was echoed
by
the semina l Russian intellectual dissident, Alexander Her/.en, who had
managed to escape the brutal authoritarian regime of Nicholas
I.
He
