Unlike nearly every other nation in the world, America embraces the cultures and heritages of all its people. Americans are the proverbial melting plot, a country created from nearly scratch though the immigration of people from two hundred countries. This fact is not true of any European, Asian, or Africa country and has been true for nearly 250 years.
American culture is unique, not better than any other, but different in important ways. America represents inclusion, a place where people can come to live in a new land but also maintain whatever ties to their original country. There is no requirement to renounce a native language, in fact, America is so inclusive election ballots are printed in over one hundred languages. American culture embraces the best of all its immigrants. American food is pizza and spaghetti, tacos and burritos, sushi, pastrami, and fried rice. The history of the United States has been to add any new influence brought by immigrants to old rules and ideas.
Any immigrant is free to participate in the American dream. There is no caste system where the status of your father is inescapably yours, a fact true in the vast majority of countries in the world. Upward mobility is not hampered by your name at birth, where your father and mother lived, or when they arrived in the United States. The proverbial Horatio Alger story of the poor child who rises to the heights of success is not rare but has been repeated again and again and again over generations. Hundreds of years of success cannot be overlooked.
Is the United States a perfect country? Of course not. All people are infallible and any nation they create must, by definition, reflect the same. But Americans take pride in their sense of justice, rooting for the underdog and fighting injustice when it is found. For centuries, American values on democracy, equal rights, civil liberties, and principles of right and wrong have been models for the rest of the world. Americans have also sent their sons and daughters to fight in foreign lands when they saw these values challenged by others. To this extent, American values have become the gold standard around the world, admired, praised, copied, and studied by leaders wanting to build their own country.
