Through "globalization," America and Europe have been increasingly influenced by Asia. For instance, Many of the action scenes from the film "The Matrix" were choreographed by a man from Hong Kong in the tradition of old Chinese kung fu movies.

Also, the Chinese practice of "Feng Shui" -- moving furniture to weird places in the room to capture some "spiritual energy" -- is actually becoming fashionable on many parts of the mainland.

Finally, most of the Fox Network's Saturday-morning children's shows have Japanese origins, so this cultural exchange has particular significance among the youngest generation.

Actually, this phenomenon is nothing new. It pre-dates even the under-appreciated explorer Marco Polo. When he returned to Italy from China, he brought back noodles. It was through the Italian cooks' experimenting with these long, foreign objects that spaghetti was born.

One of the few people who's noticed how much America is being influenced by other nations is "communitarian" Patrick J. Buchanan, the Reform Party’s 2000 Presidential candidate and author of the book “Death of the West,” and he sees this as necessarily a negative trend.

But no one in America is being forced to adopt these Asian customs, notions and products. They do so by their own free choice -- and that sort of intellectual freedom is a decided characteristic of the American free-enterprise culture.

So why is that, when Americans voluntarily embrace Asian popular culture, no one complains (except Pat Buchanan), but, when Asians voluntarily endorse American icons, the academic Left becomes outraged?

The leftist professoriat doesn't mind it when a mosque opens in America, or when Americans spend money on hiring Feng Shui experts. But, when someone establishes something as harmless as a McDonald's franchise in Arabia or Southeast Asia, those same academic leftists shout that this is "American cultural imperialism" or even "Social Darwinism," and “cultural genocide.”

These hyperbolic charges are woefully inaccurate. When an Asian man opens up his own McDonald's, it's not as if American troops are sent to his country to point guns at people and say, "Eat at McDonald's or else. Hail George W. Caesar."

In a mostly-capitalist nation like South Korea or Japan, people can legally choose for themselves whether or not they want to eat a Western hamburger.

So their disapproval of western businesses’ expanding eastward is just another example of the academic Left's many double standards.

In a December 2002 Newsweek column, after the fall of the Taliban, Anna Quindlen wrote, “How depressing was it to see Afghan citizens celebrating the end of tyranny by buying consumer electronics?”

It wasn’t depressing at all. It made perfect sense that Afghans would celebrate by getting Leonardo DiCaprio-styled haircuts and obtaining American CDs. Purchasing all of these products is an activity people exercise under economic freedom -- something sorely lacking under the Taliban’s reign.

The professors pride themselves on being "multi-cultural," but they only want one overall type of culture in Asia and one overall type of culture in Africa. Otherwise, what would explain their disdain for the assimilation of American popular culture into China, India, and Afghanistan?

If "American cultural imperialism" means the worldwide spread of the concepts of reason, individual rights, and free enterprise -- popularized by the West but terrifically practicable in bringing prosperity to any large civilization -- then let’s welcome more of it.

Stuart K. Hayashi is the president of the Reason Club of Honolulu and an undergraduate in Entrepreneurial Studies at Hawaii Pacific University, though his opinions do not necessarily reflect that of either institution. He can be reached at radical_individualist@hotmail.com

Guest Commentary...