I think this is pretty much an understood characteristic of who we are.

We go to foreign countries and get pissed when they don't speak english for christ's sake.

But I think Obama was talking about policies, not individuals. And in that case too, he's right, the way we handled Iraq, the whole you're with us or against us, ducking out of the Kyoto thing, we've been pretty arrogant in our foreign policy.

Of course we have~ But then again, we always have and they've never seemed to be all that mad at us so it's okay.

I mean, it wasn't all Bush's fault. State-side Americans in general are just hailed by most other countries as total pricks. Even Canada D:. I have a lot of Canadian friends too.

But yeah, we're pretty arrogant in general.

Obama's right, but he doesn't refer to the deeper, underlying problem of a national culture of arrogance. While the last 8 years have been nothing but unrestrained arrogance in our international conduct, it can be traced back to how we look at ourselves as a people.

Americans consistently rate themselves as smarter, more attractive, and more important than do people of other countries, in all age groups. This is to say it's a statistically significant occurrence. While etiology is notoriously elusive in the social sciences, the intuitive causes are ubiquitous in the many arenas of our lives.

Unquestioning pride is considered a virtue here. We live in the best goddamn state in the best goddamn country, and so on. Somehow we as a nation are special, and are on some kind of moral crusade to improve the world. But look into a history book-- which countries promote a culture of exceptionalism? Generally, it's the kind of evil assholes who have to trick their country into doing the reprehensible things they do. I guess to summarize, I'd say we are an arrogant people, and our actions in the world definitely reflect that.