Editing Anti-Americanism (section)

==== Politics and ideology ====
The young United States also faced criticism on political and ideological grounds. Ceaser argues that the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] strain of European thought and literature, hostile to the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] view of [[reason]] and obsessed with history and national character, disdained the [[Rationalism|rationalistic]] American project. The German poet [[Nikolaus Lenau]] commented: "With the expression ''Bodenlosigkeit'' (absence of ground), I think I am able to indicate the general character of all American institutions; what we call Fatherland is here only a property insurance scheme". Ceaser argues in his essay that such comments often repurposed the language of degeneracy, and the prejudice came to focus solely on the United States and not Canada nor Mexico.<ref name="Ceaser"/> Lenau had [[Immigration to the United States|immigrated]] to the United States in 1833 and found that the country did not live up to his ideals, leading him to return to Germany the following year. His experiences in the U.S. were the subject of a novel titled ''The America-exhaustion'' (''Der Amerika-Müde'') (1855) by fellow German [[Ferdinand Kürnberger]].<ref>''The Reader's Encyclopedia'' (1974) edited by William Rose Bennet: 556</ref>

The nature of American [[democracy]] was also questioned. The sentiment was that the country lacked "[a] monarch, aristocracy, strong traditions, official religion, or rigid class system," according to Judy Rubin, and its democracy was attacked by some Europeans in the early nineteenth century as degraded, a travesty, and a failure.<ref name="Rubin"/> The [[French Revolution]], which was loathed by many European conservatives, also implicated the United States and the idea of creating a constitution on abstract and universal principles.<ref name="Ceaser"/> That the country was intended to be a bastion of liberty was also seen as fraudulent given that it had been established with [[Slavery in the United States|slavery]].<ref name="Schama"/> "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?" asked [[Samuel Johnson]] in 1775.<ref>{{cite news |last=Staples |first=Brent |title=Give Us Liberty |work=The New York Times |date=4 June 2006 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/books/review/04staples.html |access-date=26 May 2008 |archive-date=6 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306221901/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05EFDA113EF937A35755C0A9609C8B63&sec=&spon= |url-status=live }}</ref> He famously stated, that "I am willing to love all mankind, except an American".<ref name="Rubin"/>