I'm still puzzled why anybody should feel heated about this.

It does seem to me that a lot of Americans seem to feel very surprised and indignant when they come across any implied criticism. I'd have thought that it goes with the territory, being the only surviving SuperPower, and that it's be expected and almost a matter of a kind of pride. That's how other big powers in their time, such as England or France seem to have taken it.

Bridling indignantly at criticism is the kind of thing you get from small places - when someone says your town is a dump, that's the way you react. Maybe if a small country like Ireland, which is used to people saying nice things, suddenly found itself under attack, you might get that kind of reaction - "look at all the great stuff we do".

Somehow it seems that, though America is so enormously powerful today, many Americans still seem to think of it as small and weak and needing to be defended from unfair attack.

I'm reminded of something Chesterton once said about the universe, about how with only one universe it made just as much sense to think about it as being small as being big: "The fancy that the cosmos was not vast and void, but small and cosy...to God the stars might be only small and dear, like diamonds."

So maybe if Americans think about America as being small and vulnerable and needing to be stoutly defended from the bullies who surround it, that isn't really arrogance, it's a kind of humility. And in the long run, of course, it's quite true that America's power and strength is merely a passing phase. As Kipling put it presciently, speaking about the then mighty British Empire -

Far-call'd our navies melt away—   
On dune and headland sinks the fire—   
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday   
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!   
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,   
Lest we forget, lest we forget!