I’d disagree to the extent that I think baseball is still the national sport. It has been joined but not superseded by football, because the two are complimentary (one played in the winter, one in the summer).

Otherwise, the essay really is quite a mixed bag. German dependence on the US is overestimated. There is certainly evidence of a real generation gap in Germany between those who remember the long post-war boom and those who don’t, but that is a trans-European phenomenon. That Germany is slow to change is in part a consequence of the history of rapid change in Germany: it often hasn’t gone well. German “grand visions” have been an awfully mixed bag.

Saying that “[t]he public?s capability for critical analysis is clouded by its continued acceptance of the deadening slogans of consensus politics” comes awfully close to advocating undemocratic governance, especially when “Germany must change” is itself an increasingly deadening slogan. “[T]he German public was much quicker to identify with the popular movement in Ukraine than was the government.” But governments are supposed to be hesitant to intervene in foreign nations’ domestic affairs.

But this effusive advocacy of some unspecified “change” is what is really annoying. “Germany must change” seems to be a codeword for exactly what Kornblum is saying isn’t enough: “Thus, it is too simple to claim that Germany has been ruined by social welfarism. Or that loosening work rules and lowering taxes will solve most of the problems. Or that Europe would be a world power if it could just learn to speak with one voice. Or that if only President Bush hadn?t been re-elected, German-American relations would again be harmonious.”

Instead, he tries to psychoanalyse a nation: “More important is to understand the psychological difficulty Germany is experiencing in moving from a traumatized past to a modern, self-confident future.” This lends itself to very Lakovian analysis: Germany viewed as a traumatised person with progress associated with healing. It is a terribly patronising conception that will do little to advance German “self-confidence.”

I hate to quibble, but by all indications, the sport that appeals to most American’s regardless of race and class, is football, not basketball. I’m assuming that’s what you mean by ‘America’s national game’.

Ponder what you will the implications of that but I think your analogies are off. Basketball is a distant 2nd(or 3rd depending) in terms of popularity with football.

None of which strike me as being particularly unreasonable views. The first is after all hardly an unknown theme for certain American figures.