I’ve a reminiscence of studying, someday within the Nineteen Eighties, a narrative in a French journal in regards to the American border patrol alongside the Mexican border. They don’t use police canines, the reporter defined approvingly, “due to a sure thought of the rights of man.” I’ve tried to hint this story, however alas, to no avail.
Whether or not the main points of my reminiscence are actual or not, I imagine that, usually, and for a very long time, a lot of these on this planet who have been important of the American beliefs and lifestyle, and even considered themselves as anti-American, nonetheless had a lot respect and even admiration for the nation and its traditions. Many secretly regretted not being American.
How this has modified! Simply contemplate the expertise of the South Korean personnel who have been the victims of a police raid at an LG-Hyundai plant in Georgia. They have been arrested, shackled, and jailed for one week till they have been launched and allowed to return to their nation. The Wall Road Journal experiences on the spouse of an engineer arrested there (“Confusion, Anger, Aid: Korean Engineer Tells of Week in U.S. ICE Detention,” September 12, 2025):
Lee stated she was heartbroken to listen to her husband, an LG Power worker, was in shackles. “Treating him like a felon—it made me so indignant,” she stated.
The husband was among the many 330 employees who, final Friday, landed close to Seoul on a flight chartered by the South Korean authorities. His spouse, who waited for him on the airport, emotionally declared:
I don’t need him to return there.
“There” is America. A report by the Monetary Occasions is much more damning (“South Korea Denounces ‘Stunning’ US Therapy of Detained Staff,” September 12, 2025):
The employees’ flight was delayed on Wednesday after President Donald Trump made them a last-minute provide to stay within the US. However just one elected to remain, with many who returned to Korea vowing by no means to return to America. …
Enterprise teams and South Korean officers have admitted that Korean firms usually used unsuitable visas for employees despatched to the US to construct multibillion-dollar superior vegetation. However they insist Washington left them in an “unattainable place” by refusing to facilitate short-term working visas that may permit initiatives to be accomplished on time.
One other returning employee stated that “we should always have adopted the foundations correctly”. Seoul ought to negotiate the visa problem with Washington, the employee stated, however added that “I don’t need to return to the US”.
Only a few days in the past, I discovered, on the web site of a international college in a Western nation, a listing of nations with excessive cybersecurity dangers, requiring school touring there to borrow a specifically configured gadget from the college. The nations listed (on this order):
- United States
- China
- Russia
- Iran
- India
- North Korea
I believe that, lurking beneath this record, there’s nonetheless some anti-américanisme primaire (“crude anti-Americanism”) as we (properly, a few of us) used to say in French.* Maybe many would now have some cause to not chuckle on the record. American border brokers have the facility to examine digital units at ports of entry.
America goes by harmful occasions. Those that love her most needs to be probably the most apprehensive.
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* In 1984, Georges Suffert, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the journal Le Level in Paris, printed his e-book Les nouveaux cow-boys. Essai sur l’anti-américanisme primaire (The New Cowboys: Essay on Crude Anti-Americanism). At Le Level, he was a colleague of Maurice Roy, one other Deputy Editor-in-Chief and likewise economics editor, who had printed Vive le Capitalisme! (Lengthy Dwell Capitalism!) just a few years earlier. I used to be honored to rely Roy amongst my pals. In France as in America, we appear to be residing in one other geological epoch.