So what do Americans think of Europe and then especially European moral values and European-style socialism? An interesting ‘commentary’ can be read at Breitbart.com:

Pragmatism and principle require that Obama talk sweet to European leaders. He needs their cooperation to navigate the economic crisis and the Afghanistan war. He also wants to demonstrate in a global forum that he is following through on campaign pledges to play well with others.

But examine how Europe has played in American discourse over the past few weeks and you’ll find a flurry of uneasy interludes—images driven by economic troubles, yes, but also by a persisting cultural suspicion that goes all the way back to the first American settlers.

Just last month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., invoked the specter of an imminent “Europeanization of America” if the Obama administration’s economic initiatives went forward unfettered. Neil Cavuto on the Fox Business Network last week denounced Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., as “Sweden in a suit,” for promoting a bill that would try to keep bailed-out financial institutions from paying their employees hefty bonuses. And there were the British analysts all over cable news whose accents were, more than once, played for laughs.

The American attitude toward Europe—and by Europe, we usually mean France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom—goes something like this: Europe is our stalwart and loyal partner … until it isn’t. Friends? More like frenemies.

Because in the United States, “European” as a concept is often deployed to mean unpleasant and undesired—and, most saliently, un-American. Effete intellectualism! Nationalized medicine! Class-based arrogance! Bad electronic dance music! A lack of masculinity!

“There’s that visceral hatred of effetes,” says Richard J. Golsan, a Texas A&M French professor who studies the political relationship between the United States and Europe. “You have a lot of reaction against the French and Europeans as heathens and bon vivants. … And there is an increasing sense, or was until recently, that the Europeans were not doing their part to defend the West and Western democracy.”

Now, the suspicion has a handy and relevant political container—socialism. Those who oppose Obama’s recent economic initiatives and big business interventions find a ready target in European social and economic policies that lean more toward command and control than American-style capitalism.

Read the whole thing.

Addition from Jason Arvak:  I just wanted to highlight one of the article’s notes about the difficult relationship between the United States and France.  Breitbart characterizes it thus:

France is a particular object of annoyance in modern American culture, despite its longtime status as a staunch ally that has both helped us and required our help. A backlash against France for its unwillingness to support George W. Bush’s approach to the Iraq War in 2003 led to the temporary demonization of French wine and the emergence of “freedom fries.” We remain a society that, when we think of France, are as likely to summon an image of Pepe Le Pew, the cartoon skunk, as we are Renoir or Voltaire.

I would say that the difficult American image is not a cartoon skunk, but the distressingly real DeGaulle, who set the tone for French politics that in many ways persists to this day.  And that tone is often prickly, defensive, passive-aggressive, and most importantly, very negative towards the United States and in particular U.S. power dominance in the world.  While happy to accept the protection of a geographic buffer zone provided by NATO during the Cold War against potential Soviet aggression and funded extremely disproportionately by American taxpayers, Gaullist politicians nonetheless opted France out of participation in NATO and frequently worked to obstruct U.S. foreign policy, most notably in the denial of overflight rights for U.S. retaliation against Libya in 1986.  Even after the Cold War ended but prior to the supposed provocations of U.S. foreign policy after 9/11, French politicians were frequently heard to repeat standard anti-American tropes about the danger of “hyperpower” predominance by those oh-so-goche Americans.

In his comments where the media focused on his apologies for American failings, President Obama was correct to note that it has been a two-way street with regards to the creation of tensions in the U.S.-European relationship.  In particular, France prior to Sarkozy has been a very difficult “partner” for U.S. foreign policy.  Let us hope that the new atmosphere between the United States and France can endure under the inevitable counter-assault from the Gaullist tradition.