Humanities

America was also our protector and insurance policy. It ended the war in the Pacific and saved us from joining Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It saved us from the spread of Communism in South-East Asia, and kept the balance of power during the Cold War. Even as we came to understand the terrible inhumanity of the bomb and ferociously disagree over the Vietnam War, nuclear deterrence and now the war on terror, our debates have largely followed those in the US itself. And all the while our imitation of its popular culture never faltered. Nor are we really alone in this. Absent a few mullahs and the chattering classes, doesn't the whole world want to be American?

America is attractive precisely because it has grown. Hordes of immigrants from different parts of the world gave it diversity and a tradition of tolerance long before the new Europe discovered those words and turned them into weapons of self-destruction. Recent immigration from Central America has served a more vital function: it has helped to keep the birth rate at a relatively healthy two per woman, in contrast with the below-replacement rates almost everywhere in Europe - as well as Canada and Australia.