America’s greatest success is the rule of law, stable republican government, and the protection of private property. America continues to outdo the rest of the world because it is better.
It's greatest success was in killing or driving off native populations or smaller groups of other settlers (French, Spanish, Mexican) to get 7 million sqkm of prime real estate only found to the same scale in Europe (where it's divided among 40+ countries) and China (surprise-surprise, the main rival).
A place like Germany, for example, I find in no way inferior to the US, population wise, but it's geographically much more constrained and in much less defensible position.
Plenty of native empires, such as the Aztecs and Mayans, enslaved, murdered, and worked to death numerous other groups of people, which are well documented in primary sources.
The US did evil, as did the Germans in Africa during their colonial period, and so did African empires that sold their enemies into slavery.
Nothing is black and white. Although many on HN like to pretend so.
America’s greatest success used to be the rule of law, stable republican government, and the protection of private property.
Now, the US has the greatest degree of high-level corruption in the world, second perhaps only to China. In China, corruption is technically still illegal, but permitted to the Party faithful. In the US, it has all been made explicitly legal.
A place like Germany, for example, I find in no way inferior to the US, population wise, but it's geographically much more constrained and in much less defensible position.