Wednesday, December 23, 2009 - Submitted Comment

My comment submitted to the New York Times in response to the opinion article ‘In Defense of America’.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/opinion/22iht-edcohen.html

Roger Cohen may be right. I am a Dutch person who majored in American Studies and spent time living in America. The fundamental difference as I experienced it was a boundless optimism at the core of the American cultural psyche. For a Dutchman life and the environment seem more of a balancing act between limiting factors.

At its best, the American optimism translates into a can-do spirit willing to tackle anything in the fundamental belief that there is a way to solve all problems without compromise. At its worst, it causes ignorance, arrogance and aggression.

Cohen keeps a scorecard and asks which culture is better or worse. My question to him is; who is served by this analysis? There are as many opinions on the subject as there are people on this planet. I think the energy spent on ranking cultures relative to one another could be better spent analyzing the flaws in one's own and trying to fix them.