Editor:
I would add a few clarifying words concerning the sentiment expressed in Alan Guebert’s column, “American guns and European butter” (Farm and Dairy, Feb. 20, 2003).
Mr. Guebert says that Europe isn’t anti-American in practice today, and notes the number of recognizable corporate chains as a sign that perhaps Europe is becoming more American.
No one can doubt that Europe is, by the prevalence of these bland and cheap franchise chains, becoming more like contemporary America. But they are not “American.”
Burger King is mentioned in the article, but they have long been owned by the British. The same goes for Holiday Inn and hundreds of other “All-American” brand names you might recognize.
These particular names might have started on our soil as American businesses long ago, but they have since become international corporations, neither answering to nor operating on American terms.
They don’t bring American values to the places they colonize so much as they keep the natives in check – for example, McDonald’s workers in Indonesia last year began wearing Islamic garb on Fridays, while here in the USA where Christianity is under increasing attack, references to Christmas and Easter have been systematically removed from corporate jurisdiction.
This is not the “All-American” that I think was intended.
There is good reason for Old Europe to resent such forces – and good reason for Americans to, as well. The legal entity known as the corporation has origins not with the principles of our founding fathers or the Constitution of the United States of America, but with the British monarchy.
It is not American individualistic spirit that you see in those familiar logos around the world – it is the spirit of world empire, the signpost of globalist colonialism.
In Scotland, Guebert notes, it’s easier to get a Whopper than the traditional Scottish dishes; to which I add, with bitterness and alarm, that the same is true for the United States of America.
Where are the great restaurateurs of America, and their legendary establishments? Not here. Along our highways and by-ways it is now only Whoppers and equivalents.
I don’t eat at these franchise chains; I hold it as a matter of pride that I have not eaten at a McDonald’s in 10 years. I eat at diners, at the few remaining American independents that exist; I buy my produce from independent American farmers, because that is what I think of as “All-American.”
I am not a farmer and have nothing at all to do with agriculture; I only subscribe to and read Farm and Dairy because I have an interest in American farmers – they are my brothers, my fellow citizens, so I know that it is I who prosper when they do. Their future is my future, my country’s future.
Michael Stutz
Cleveland, Ohio
