You know, I read some of the posts in these topic areas, and I shake my head. "The people of the world on their knees before the Stars and Stripes...tear stained faces..." Where do you get this from? Did you all have tenured old Communist professors ranting anti-American slogans through their soup stained grey beards?
For starters, try reading just a little US history. The country was populated by intellectual dissidents, religious dissidents, the poor, and the opportunistic, mostly refugees from decaying European monarchies or repressive Industrial Revolution governments. As a result, there is an almost institutionalized mistrust of big government and big organization in the States.
Your European ancestors who didn't leave during the migrations of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, were likely smug members of the 'have' society, or those who were afraid, for one reason or another, to question the status quo. Having descended from those who stayed behind, I suppose it is understandable that you cannot comrehend the motivations of those who left, and the social system they have spawned.
It is difficult to listen to Europeans, with their socialist governments, vestigial monarchies, and de facto social classes, speak of freedom, and then in the next breath, of American 'repression'.
There is such a division of powers between the states and the Federal government, because of a disinclination to put all the power in the hands of one central government - an idea apparently alien to Europeans.
That is also why the Executive(President), Legislative(Congress), and Judiciary control different aspects of governmental function, and must dicker with one another to get anything done.
That is also why the right to bear arms is in the US Constitution. While the idea is a hard one for the rest of us in the world, the Americans demand the right to bear arms, not primarily as a defence against crime, etc., but as a defence against the day that the government turns repressive, and comes for them. We may call that paranoia, but it is instructive for our discussion, to note the level of anti government paranoia in the US.
If you continue your US history lesson, you will learn that until the second world war, that country was, for the most part, isolationist. They didn't want to get involved in the world's hassles, until it became necessary to pull your European butts out of the fire. They were then pulled onto the world stage by the power vacuum of shambles Europe, and the increased power of Communist Bloc countries. Don't forget that countries 'liberated' by Stalin, stayed behing the Iron Curtain until 1989.
Next, try visiting there. No doubt it has lots of deep problems, but so does my country, and so does yours. Racism is still a problem there, but neither would I want to be an Algerian in France, or a wog (you name the race) in Britain.
Once I overcame my own inbred Canadian mistrust of the US, I spent some time there, and realized they don't have horns on their heads. However, they do have a vitality that I've rarely encountered in my travels around the world, and an inventiveness that has given us things like - the Internet.
Next, ask yourself: how much of your dislike comes from the righteous anger of the morally correct, or from the sour grapes of the jealous? People in the world do better or worse; the Americans tend to do better than most of the rest of us; that bugs a lot of people.
