There's a fundamentally different social contract in Europe from the US. The US is a nation founded on ideals: it's the nation of Manifest Destiny and the immu

There's a fundamentally different social contract in Europe from the US. The US is a nation founded on ideals: it's the nation of Manifest Destiny and the immutable rights of the individual. The premise is that anyone from anywhere can "become American" if they buy in to the American system. In Europe by contrast most nations are defined by their history. There is a certain nativism in European thought that can't really exist in the same way in the US since a vast majority of the population emigrated within the last few centuries, and in many cases much more recently.