Europeans Are Not Total Morons, It's Just The Media That Keeps Them In The Dark

More than 50 percent of Britons believe that polygamy is legal in the United States; in fact, it is illegal in all 50 states. Almost one-third of Britons believe that Americans who have not paid their hospital fees or insurance premiums are not entitled to emergency medical care; in fact, such treatment must be provided by law.

Seventy percent of Britons think the United States has done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000; in fact, America’s rate of growth of carbon emissions has decreased by almost ten percent since 2000, while that of the EU has increased by 2.3 percent.

Eighty percent of Britons believe that “from 1973 to 1990, the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons.” In fact, the United States sold just 0.46 percent of Saddam’s arsenal to him; Russia, France, and China supplied 57 percent, 13 percent, and 12 percent, respectively. _PJM

If Americans were unaware of the lobotomising effect of European media on undiscerning Euro-consumers, it would be easy to get the impression that Europeans are hollowed-skulled dolts with chronic heavy metal poisoning. One can be sure that is not the case by simply traveling to a number of European countries, and conversing on any topic other than politics. Doing that, one finds Europeans just as interesting and mentally stimulating as other Earth dwellers. It is only when straying onto political topics that the mentally stultifying effects of the media becomes all too apparent.

Europe’s unaccountable left-wing media spoon-feeds the European masses with a daily diet of sensationalist anti-American propaganda, so much so that ordinary Europeans have developed a thoroughly skewed perception of American reality.

For another thing, statistics show that Europeans are not nearly as well traveled in America as Americans are in Europe. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, some 11.4 million Europeans visited the United States in 2007, which is roughly 2.5 percent of the European population. (By contrast, a record 13.3 million Americans visited Europe in 2007, or roughly 5 percent of the U.S. population.) The lack of firsthand knowledge of the United States is arguably the biggest reason why ordinary Europeans cannot discern fact from fiction when it comes to America.

Nevertheless, this trend may be changing. Due in large part to the strong euro, the number of European visitors to the United States increased by 16 percent in the first half of 2008 alone. And Britons, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and many other Europeans visiting the United States for the first time are beginning to realize that the consistently negative images of America so meticulously constructed by Europe’s left-wing elites do not jibe with reality.

Certainly, a healthy exchange of visitors and ideas--leaving the heavily biased media out of the picture--would go a long way toward extending mutual understanding across both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Another thing that would help besides simple travel, for more narrow-minded thinkers, is to broaden their range of reading materials beyond what they have become far too comfortable with. Going only so far as to confirm your bias day after day is a poor substitute for broadening horizons.