“ Today, the vast phenomenon of anti-Americanism stems mainly from our government's policies. But if the next president changed some of those policies, is there anything in our culture that might restore our luster, or at least make us less hateful, not just to Arabs and Muslims, but also to the Asians and Europeans who were once our closest friends?”

No one makes “real” or “lasting” friends through any other means than by, for lack of a better phrase, being “true to one’s self.” Efforts at broadcasting oneself, in fact, seem likely to backfire when/if such efforts are perceived as phony.

“And so the most prominent suggestion on how to improve America's face in the world—a suggestion made by well over half of those who wrote me—is to send the world more American faces and to bring more of the world's faces into America.”

This does not sound to me like the type of suggestion made by people who are, as the article suggested, familiar with life/cultures abroad.

I am a native of the USA but I have lived and traveled and, perhaps most importantly, worked throughout India, Japan, Australia, Europe, Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, and even Canada………..

And very rarely did I get the sense that the more “my” culture got to know the “other” culture the more we all got along. Hardly.

It’s one thing to visit a distant land or even to study there. Try working with those from another culture. That involves hard-core attempts at communication for the purpose of achieving what should be a commonly understood goal. In almost every culture I encountered in that manner, such attempts led to serious misunderstandings. Usually, that would lead to anger and resentments.

It’s difficult to describe how deep misunderstandings can run when dealing with people who think in completely different “paradigms” from Americans. Our most unquestioned assumptions will be incomprehensible to them and, somewhat often, condemned. Before we can even figure out what happened we’d find ourselves ostracized.

Kaplan’s article concludes: “The first step, then, is to reopen the doors to the world.”

How idealistic. I would not put that as the first step; rather, the first step is to do nothing more than mind our own shop. Definitely we can maintain better values than we’ve done over the last few years. But simply forget all about the idea of projecting ourselves, in any way, to the rest of the world. We need only be who we are. Those out there who are going to feel in tune with us will do so spontaneously.

And there is absolutely nothing we can do with the rest. We should let them live in peace; that’s all.

God help all of us if they fail to return the favor.