The Emerging Atlantic Culture. - book reviews

National Review, May 16, 1994 by John Wauck

By Thomas Molnar (Transaction, 113 pp., $27.94)

HERE'S a refreshing change of pace: a well-known conservative casts the United States in the role of The Evil Empire. An apt subtitle for this book, a bitter indictment of American culture and its deleterious effects upon Europe since World War II, would be Professor Molnar Hates America. Mr. Molnar contends that the "Atlantic culture" is less a confluence of two cultures than an extension of one, for in the new Atlantic culture, it is only Europe and not America that is being transformed. Ever since 1945, he says, Europe has been occupied territory, abjectly bowing before manners, mores, food, music, movies, fashions, products, and attitudes imported from the New World. He calls this process "the peak event" of the twentieth century, and "American culture" is for him a synonym for the dark side of modernity. As in any effective broadside, there's a good deal of caricature here. None of Mr. Molnar's accusations are baseless, but he ignores the virtues that offset our peculiar defects: pervasive (if somewhat shallow) religious belief love of freedom and opportunity, boundless energy and creativity, the earnest desire to do what is right, reverence for law and civic virtue. Unfortunately, in Mr. Molnar's portrait of America, a disproportionate amount of canvas is occupied to, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Disneyland.