Are Americans different than Europeans?

Steven Den Beste has written an important post on how European leaders misunderstand Americans.

I’ve long thought that rather than taking visiting European leaders to see the sights in Washington, DC, New York, or Los Angeles our presidents should take a driving tour with them. Get off the Interstate and take the old, more picturesque highway system. Start in New York, by all means, but go from there through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California. The visiting dignitary would pass mile after mile of farmland and hundreds of small and medium sized towns. And nearly every one of these towns would have local government buildings, courthouses, churches, colleges, and factories.

America is vast. Taking that trip you’d have driven 3,000 miles–farther than the distance from the westernmost tip of Ireland to the Urals.

America is rich. Most of the people you passed would be prosperous and comfortable. Some are worried right now but they’re still significantly better-off than their European counterparts.

America is ethnically diverse. The people in the towns you passed would have German, French, English, Hispanic, and Irish surnames. You’d pass people of Native American, African, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian descent. Not only is America more ethnically diverse than any European country–we’re more ethnically diverse than all of Europe taken together.

America is religious. We practice nearly every known religion and those churches you passed have people in them on Sundays (or Saturdays or Fridays). And those people give their own money to support these churches–they aren’t supported by the State as in much of Europe.

We are older as a nation than Germany or Italy. And in the same period in which France has had, what, ten governments, we’ve had one. And, as Den Beste points out, a remarkable continuity in policy regardless of who is Commander-in-Chief.

The U. S. did not become the most powerful country on Earth either because we just fell off the turnip truck or in spite of it regardless of what some European leaders may think. And it hasn’t been just luck, either. We’ve worked hard. We’ve been toughminded. We’ve had faith. And we’ve been free.