It's America's Fault: The Default Assumption

A very interesting post today by the highly reliable Michael Barone explores something we've riffed on frequently here at HazZzMat: If anything bad happens in the world, it's always America's fault:

Where does this default assumption come from? And why is it so prevalent among our affluent educated class (which, after all, would seem to overlap considerably with the people being complained about?). It comes, I think, from our schools and, especially, from our colleges and universities. The first are staffed by liberals long accustomed to see America as full of problems needing solving; the latter have been packed full of the people cultural critic Roger Kimball calls "tenured radicals," people who see this country and its people as the source of all evil in the world.

A great piece, condensing in just a few tight paragraphs the whole essence of today's imbalanced, self-hating left. Indeed, "Hate America First," on display once again in this weekend's pathetic anti-Vietnam, er, anti-Iraq War demonstrations here in DC and elsewhere, was just another case of this reflexive tic, which is what passes these days for intelligence in the wealthy and pampered realm of today's Cocktail Party Marxists. Read the rest of it here.