The New York Times has an insightful article this evening on international response to yesterday’s election results. I found this story encouraging because it indicates to me that other nations may be willing to embrace an America that is not so insistent on calling all the shots. It may yet be possible to restore some of the global goodwill that our nation had once possessed. Here are a few abridged selections from the story:

As word of the American midterm election results and, later, the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld spread across the globe, criticism of the United States turned less shrill, less gloating, more textured than in the past.

It was not, of course, a presidential vote — though some thought it should have been. But the tone of criticism seemed more conciliatory than on previous occasions when President Bush has stumbled, in part because his power is now seen as waning irrevocably.

For Europe, it’s good news, because America will be forced to be less of a solitary aggressor.

As the Italian foreign minister, Massimo d’Alema, put it: “One cycle is over — the cycle of preventative war, of unilateralism, has ended in great failure. That’s the truth, and that’s how it is perceived by the American public opinion.”

“Europeans have tended to look at the U.S. as being synonymous with Bush,” said Karsten D. Voigt, the coordinator of German-American relations in the foreign ministry. “This shows that the reality is far more diverse and multi-faceted. I hope it will lead to a diminution of anti-American prejudice.”

I hope so, too. As the story makes clear, there are pitfalls to and obstacles in this new moment in American politics, but I still can’t help but feel that we have made at least one step in the right direction by acknowledging that America is a nation of many voices and (indirectly) that the world is bigger than America’s view of it.

(By the way, it’s free all-access week at the New York Times, so you can see the full story without registering.)

I don’t know what to expect from tonight’s Lost mid-season finale episode, “I Do.” I love this show, period, but I also really hope that there are some tantalizing revelations this evening. I don’t want everything spelled out. I do love the mystery, but I’d like for it to be a progressively evolving mystery, one where some questions are answered and others are raised. That hasn’t felt like the case lately.

I have a feeling that we’ll be left wondering until February (when Lost returns) whether Sawyer is alive. ABC’s teaser brief suggests that Pickett, the member of the Others that Sawyer keeps sparring with, may try to kill him. I hope not because as much as I often loathe Sawyer, I also find myself liking him and his contributions to the show.

My wife and I have discussed Lost at length (our friends may need Losticil to keep up with us), and one thing we love is how well the writers catch us by surprise on a regular basis. Almost anything is fair game (sometimes to a fault), but tonight’s episode may test our untouchables hypothesis: Our theory is that Jack, Kate, Locke and Sawyer are exempt from the possibility of being killed off because they are too integral to the show. Many shows have these characters, but Lost has displayed more willingness to dispense with important characters than most, so it’s an important distinction that this “core four” may never leave the show. We’ll see the latest test to that theory tonight, but I’m not expecting it to be proved false.

The ABC teaser also indicates that Jack will decide about helping Ben by performing surgery to treat his spinal injury. I’m curious to see what he does and to see how much we find out about the consequences of his choice tonight. I can’t decide whether Juliet was sincere about her clandestine communications with Jack during last week’s episode or whether she was merely testing to see if he could be trusted to perform the surgery.

As an aside, I sure hope someone gives the castaways on the beach something to do. They’ve been especially dull so far this season.

I rarely allow someone to put words in my mouth, but associated press reporter Paul Haven just put my thoughts on paper even better than I could have in his story today on international response to yesterday’s election:

I agree, and this is a big reason why I have gradually shifted from being a moderate Republican in 2000 to a progressive independent by 2004 (and beyond). Are we the strongest nation in the world? Yes. Does that mean that we can be the bully in the global schoolyard? No. Regardless of our strength, we need to work with other nations to build consensus about how to solve the issues we face and then go tackle them–rather than trying to tackle them on our own and then trying to convince the world that we know best.

That said, I sincerely don’t want to spend the next several weeks arrogantly basking in the Republicans’ losses last night. We all, including myself, could stand to have a little humility and to make an authentic attempt to try to face the problems that confront us and make this country a better place to live and to make it once again a respected presence on the world stage.