In the current issue of Newsweek, editor Fareed Zakaria announces the advent of the “post-American” world.  The Pax Americana, or world peace resulting from America’s reign as the lone superpower, is coming to an end, we’re told.  America isn’t in decline, exactly, it’s just that the rest of the world is catching up, thanks to the adoption of wise economic policies and political structures. 

Zakaria seems to have missed an obvious point:  this world is being remade in America’s image, not through the force of arms but through the power of our example. 

Nations around the world are redesigning their political systems and their economic systems according to the American model: the rule of law, respect for God-given human rights, the democratic republic and free markets.  They’re able to follow the path America blazed only because of the Pax Americana we have created and maintained through great sacrifice of our own treasure and blood.  Never before has the leading nation in the world been as generous as America, or as judicious in the exercise of power.

Unlike the tribal or ethnic bases of patriotism in other countries, American patriotism centers on a shared set of values that have proven to be the most powerful and beneficial in human history.  Any nation that abandons American values and turns to the secularist, egalitarian, utopian model so fashionable in elite circles will degenerate into a socialist dystopia like revolutionary Cuba.

One need only look at Zimbabwe for a glaring example of how a previously Westernized, prosperous nation can plunge into chaos and poverty under Marxist rule.  To see how journalism deteriorates into worship of the political bosses, look at the lead story, as of noon May 6, on the Web site of the North Korea’s Central News Agency, “Kim Jong Il Inspects KPA Unit.”

Our elites, particularly the media elites, ought to be calling for more American-style patriotism, not sneering at it.