According to a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, Britons have become tired of a country they view as a "vulgar empire builder."
That country is not China, Iran, North Korea or Russia - it's the United States of America.
A further 81 percent of those polled said Bush's championing of democracy in the Middle East was little more than "a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests."
The poll also said that most Britons see our society as cruel, vulgar, arrogant and divided by class and racism.
Seventy-three percent of respondents said the U.S. is "ignorant of the outside world," and 83 percent said it "doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks." I have to say that's not very flattering, but with our country's 230th birthday in season, we need to recognize the folly of American exceptionalism.
The kind of flag-waving we are raised to consider a virtue only breeds ignorance and arrogance with regard to the outside world - not to mention complacency here at home.
Americans who can't understand why people in a country that's supposed to be our ally would have such a low opinion of us need to face reality: The U.S. is not better than everyone else simply by virtue of being the U.S. or being a democracy with a high standard of living.
If living abroad for several years taught me anything, it was that being American doesn't make me better or more entitled to respect than anyone else. It also taught me that the capitalism and democracy we enjoy here are not universally applicable - they just happen to be what works for us.
That's not to say I like dictatorships, but if Iraq, China, Iran, Myanmar and other countries must adopt democracy and laissez-faire capitalism, they should do it as we did - by their own free will. Otherwise, democracy and capitalism just become another form of colonialism.
Another aspect of American exceptionalism is the belief that we have nothing to learn from the rest of the world.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia took umbrage to the citing of foreign laws in Lawrence v. Texas and Roper v. Simmons, which overturned sodomy laws and banned the execution of juveniles, respectively. Apparently, in his view, our being the U.S. automatically made our legal system superior to all. It was, therefore, acceptable to retain such barbaric anachronisms as sodomy laws and executing children, even as other industrialized, Western countries have abolished capital punishment altogether.
Our nation's hubris reminds me of a certain tarot card, "The Tower." The tower is built up to great magnificence, its builders convinced of their righteousness. Suddenly and unexpectedly, lightning strikes it and sends it crashing down.
The British used to have a saying: "The sun never sets on the British Empire." Eventually, the sun did precisely that. The Chinese used to call their country "The Middle Kingdom between Heaven and Earth," and they shunned imported goods from the West. In fewer than 200 years, however, the world's wealthiest country became a backwater as its arrogance made it vulnerable to colonialism.
We might be the world's most powerful nation right now, but there's no such thing as "the greatest nation on earth" because nobody stays on top forever. God isn't sitting up in Heaven looking over us to the exclusion of other nations. When the damning lightning strike comes, no god will come to save us.
We don't need more flag waving. We need to practice humility.
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