[Marcus Marulus]

I haven't yet read this new book, but I suppose it is an enlarged (or altered) edition of his book written in Croatian and published in 1992, shortly after he returned from the emigration to the newly independent Croatia, under the title: Američka ideologija: nova europska sudbina ili putokaz u novu katastrofu ("The American ideology: the new European fate or a waymark toward a new disaster?")

I had read that book in Croatian and it seemed to me quite good, although I had the impression that he hadn't elaborated his theses enough, as if the book had been written in a haste. Most of the theses expounded there are the same ones presented in the works of Julius Evola and Werner Sombart though, so that he could be accused of non-originality to a certain extent. But it's not always the originality that is the main criterion for judging all monographs. Sometimes good syntheses of other people's thoughts can prove useful. It is a matter of certain talent to be able to extract from the writings of other authors that what is essential and tell it apart from the non-essential. I am looking forward to this new book, if there will be something new and interesting to find in it.

Actually, one member of my family knows Sunić personally, albeit it is a superficial acquaintance. The man is the employee in the Ministry of the Exterior. This position hampers him from being too much un-PC, because he is on the pay-roll of a pro-globalist and anti-nationalist regime.

In fact, I remember some of his interviews in which he firmly endorsed the EU superstate and NATO. Needless to say that I utterly disliked that, as well as some other non-nationalist positions of his. I am no sure though, if it is his personal conviction or he is not allowed to cross some boundaries, being the government employee.

These reasons are significantly different from those that one might encounter in the Euro-American leftist and mainstream press,

I have always dismissed with scorn the critique of America practiced by the European left, because that critique is mostly very American in nature, ie. they criticize America from the point of view of the Americanism, without sometimes being aware of that. It is one of the themes that Sunić deals with in the above-mentioned book written in Croatian.

that President Bush is a Christian maniac

That is not completely untrue, in fact it is half of the truth: maniac - yes, Christian -no.

or that Americans have taken an inexcusably long time to introduce homosexual marriage

The good old myth of the Conservative and morally traditionalist America, that is inimical to "gays", a myth very much cherished by many factions of the European left. In fact, the whole stereotypical "gay culture" originated in America and spread from there. That they haven't yet legalized "the marriage" is of secondary importance in this context.

They have whole neighbourhoods (like Castro in San Francisco) where they can practice their life-style and live in de facto marriages, so what's the purpose of some damn' paper?

A Hungarian friend of mine has a sister, who divorced from her husband, after he started to show those inclinations, you know what I mean. After the divorce (he left two children) he emigrated to America, got a job as techinician in a local hospital somewhere on the East Coast and he is full of praise for the newly discovered freedom in America for those of his ilk and for the abundance of lovers he is able to find.

Contrary to the postwar conservative illusion that the US, unlike revolutionary France, embraced historic rights while rejecting the “rights of man,”

In fact, I read some neocon and pro-American European publications in which such nonsense can be read, like that there is a fundamental difference between the supposedly inherently evil and destructive French Revolution and the noble, good, even somehow "Conservative", American revolution.

Sunic shows Americans being as obsessed with universal rights as they are with consumer products.

I read this brilliant comparison on several places, namely that "rights" are being multiplied like consumer goods these days.

It is the combination of consumption and rights talk which has produced “homo americanus,” a constantly reproduced American prototype that by now, according to Sunic, is as easily identified as “homo sovieticus.” During the Cold War, Sunic and others living in the communist bloc began to think of the products of party indoctrination as having a recognizable character and appearance. It was postmodern and post-bourgeois, but for all of its ritualized revolutionary discourse this human type was profoundly conformist. Its presence, according to some critics, precluded the possibility of restoring human character as it had existed before, in pre-Marxist societies: as a result of longtime Communist control, one had to deal with flat, standardized personalities that might have been the worst byproduct of “scientific socialism.”

I perceive this overwhelming standardization that is being carried out through the media. It is even worse when people start to imitate the mediatic stereotypes in their real lives...

As the creations of a self-proclaimed political experiment, whose subjects generally frown on the European past, Americans, and especially the younger generation, show a depressing sameness. But they mask this defect as individual self-discovery.

That's the worst possible case. A slave who thinks that he is free, a collectivist conformist following herd instincts, but who thinks of himself as of an individualist. A man in that state is terribly lost, maybe irreparably.

And he seems bothered by the fact that Europeans have begun to imitate this gestalt even while bewailing American influence.

Yes, that's the worst thing, Europe starting to look like a caricature of the modern America, which in turn is caricature itself. The seemingly anti-American Americanists I alluded to above.

In both places the observation is made that the politics of guilt may be imperialistic righteousness that the moral fanatic turns against himself, when he is not venting it on others.

This guilt is a very interesting phenomenon, that should be scrutinized into moer depth. It's a very unnatural and pathological sign.