This essay by Bret Stephens about the roots of French anti-Americanism is interesting and erudite, but I think the real cause is less recondite. They hate us because they were once a superpower, but lost their position of dominance through and mismanagement of their own affairs. They indulged in colonialism instead of the nation building lead by the U.S. in Germany and Japan. They squandered their inheritance on a mess of socialist pottage, and it galls (gauls?) them that we unsophisticated rubes with just barely 200 years of nationhood have eclipsed them.

They shouldn't take it so hard. After all, France did produce de Tocqueville. They should read his writing some time.