> Many of the distinctive things I noticed could be summed up by describing America as a young culture. Americans have the optimism and energy of youth, but the

> Many of the distinctive things I noticed could be summed up by describing America as a young culture. Americans have the optimism and energy of youth, but they're also comparatively unsophisticated. This article has always stuck with me and I think speaks to what you're trying to say. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8176448.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon... "There is something about the carelessness of America that gives space for greatness." "If you do not like your life and you have drive and luck, you can change it because - being American - you believe you can change it." "But if Sonia Sotomayor is to make it big, there must be something creating the drive, and part of that something is the poverty of the alternative, the discomfort of the ordinary lives that most Americans endure and the freedom that Americans have to go to hell if that is the decision they take. This is the atmosphere in which Nobel Prize winners are nurtured. A nation which will one day mass produce a cure for type one diabetes, could not, would not, save little Kara Neumann from the bovine idiocy of her religious parents."