America is a country more bound together by ideas and desires rather than geography and history . Many other countries , people live there probably because their ancestors lived there or nearby . In America , pretty much everybody who isn ' t black had a family that chose to come there . That means that , one , the people who built a new western , free society from the ground up into a superpower are the parents or grandparents of people living today . And they were people who chose this land , many still feel that way . Two , because there is a feeling that America has basically been the greatest good in the world for the last 150 years by avoiding colonialism , opening markets , defending human rights , and supporting democracy and capitalism . Europe has a lot of reasons to downplay nationalism . one being that Europe has just started recovering from destroying itself twice over nationalism in the last century . The other being it ' s hope of an integrated economic and political union will prevent it from destroying itself again , and make it relevant in the 21 st century .