I frame this story about my three-week getaway to Europe last summer by asking what it means for Americans to venture across the pond at this juncture in our history. How do we navigate foreign cultures during a moment when our own national obsessions, with everything from rape biology scandals to “Honey Boo Boo’s” Southern familial dysfunction, are more insular than ever? How can Americans abroad serve as global ambassadors when our own national discourse is emblematized by a Hollywood cowboy ranting at an empty chair while apostrophizing the President? 

To anyone who grew up in the Cold War, the rhetoric of the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential candidates is strangely familiar. The United States, they warn, is threatened by an alien ideology. What’s startling is that the bogeyman this time around is not resurgent and increasingly hostile Russia, but Western Europe – Washington’s closest and most steadfast ally since the end of World War II.