What is the ONE thing that propelled the United States to the top?

[Jack V Savage]

lots of great things to like and vice versa, but movies and music dont make a country great, standard of living for all citizens, how the poor and sick are treated, things like this are a start

I think art is part of the greatness of a country.

Don't like most of the explanations here. Lots of countries have a similar level of geographical isolation, lots of countries have natural resources (and it's generally a bad thing for them), lots of countries have market-based economies.

I think Pan gets a good one:

Honestly? Immigration.

Almost every great thing this country produced was the result of immigrants or the next 2-3 generations.

Shit, even Trump is only 2nd generation American, his grandfather was an immigrant.

But it doesn't fully explain why we've had people coming here to do great things. I think we're uniquely good at absorbing people among the best nations. I posted this rather video before:



It's obviously pretty hokey, but the fact that that was coming from the gov't and that it represented a view that there was a bipartisan consensus on is significant.

The fact that we had a fresh start (with no previous gov't to displace before liberalism took hold) also gives us an advantage. Until recently, the dominant faction of our political right hasn't been aristocratic, and partly as a result of that, the dominant faction of our political left has never been revolutionary socialist/anarchist.