Who made America great?

[Green Arrow]

Nation and people are the same thing.

Not in the way the people like Mac-7 use the word "nation."

[Ransom]

Oh yeah...I forgot about France.

One must actually know the topic matter before one can actually forget. So I don't think your above statement is accurate, in fact, I'll wager you know very little of America's history and what you do know...you learned on Oprah.

[Peter1469]

Leaving geopolitics aside, the people who settled early America made America great. They didn't come here to create a state (i.e. government); they came here to make a living for themselves and their family.

Maybe that is why Americans do government poorly. The quality Americans are more worried about living their lives as opposed to managing society.

[Ransom]

Leaving geopolitics aside, the people who settled early America made America great. They didn't come here to create a state (i.e. government); they came here to make a living for themselves and their family.

Maybe that is why Americans do government poorly. The quality Americans are more worried about living their lives as opposed to managing society.

People who settled surely. But Americans in Lincoln's generation and those confronting tyranny.....deserve praise. As Colin Powell once observed we invaded and liberated millions during world wars asking nothing in return but enough land to bury our dead.

[southwest88]

Leaving geopolitics aside, the people who settled early America made America great. They didn't come here to create a state (i.e. government); they came here to make a living for themselves and their family.

Maybe that is why Americans do government poorly. The quality Americans are more worried about living their lives as opposed to managing society.

I'm sure the Native Peoples & their surviving descendants appreciate the praise. As well as the Spanish, French, Dutch, German & other peoples who pioneered European exploration & resource exploitation in North America - parts of which eventually became the US. As for the state of mind of the early British colonists - it's hard to say.

Yah, there were religious & economic & political refugees, more or less. The problems they had was that the early waves didn't have the right set of skills to break new land, plant strange crops, clear woods. A lot of them had to learn by doing, & they suffered terribly in the process, & many of them died or were broken by a very hard life.

All in all, building upon the British systems of politics, economics, trade, law & so on - yah, the British colonies prospered eventually, & the prosperity spread outwards - but didn't readily include the people who were already here, nor French, Dutch, German, etc. fellow colonizers, unless they bought into the British formal economy & politics. The political franchise did spread beyond the traditional top layer - a good thing. But that took a lot of economic development, & the extension of the franchise was always a struggle, staying just ahead of outright rebellions.