What's your favorite thing(s) about America?

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings

@Ivan These are a few of my favorite things. :]

I don’t live in America so there’s not much I can say, but I sure as hell love a lot of American entertainment. (Movies mostly, but it also applies to music and video games. Those aren’t ALL from Japan. XD)
And yeah yeah, I’m quite aware of the whole Hollywood mainstream thing which many love to declare hatred to, but the hell with that.

@Symbeline Oh yeah! I love the video games, like Call of Duty. Although, I’m not very good at the game. I just watch my brother play. :]

I like how big it is physically. It makes it less of a pain to go long distances.

inb4thatswhatshesaid

Its wide-openness in all ways

The noble goals on which our government was founded.
The thing I like least is how people can twist freedom of speech to spread fear and hatred and throw the truth out like yesterdays bath water.

Y’all have some pretty things to look at there (mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers, etc).

One word: Appalachia.

Also, I can disappear into some privately owned woods for a weekend, start a campfire, shoot some guns, and pick a little guitar without having to give anyone a reason why.

I love the diversity of it as well, in the people and in the geography. I wouldn’t want to live in a country that really only has one climate zone. It’s nice to have a mixture of many different ones. It’s also nice to know that there are warm beaches, mountains to ski on, dense forests, and plains all in one place (all in one state if it’s California). In terms of the people, I like the mixtures of the different cultures and the different backgrounds. I wouldn’t necessarily want to live in an ethnically homogeneous country.

I like all of the different places we have that we can go to see and I love that we have so many historic sites we can visit. There is so much to see and do, it could take quite a while to do it all, so there’s always somewhere new to go on vacation.

Are we talking about the Unites States of America? America covers two continents and a lot of countries.

I personally like Brazilian booty and the steak tacos in Mexico.

It’s glorious volume of creations and world changing technologies
U.S. Constitution
The frickin’ wealth and what that allows for – The U.S. financial markets (the crown jewel of the U.S.)
Its introduction of National Parks to the world
Toilet paper
Sextant
Aeronautics
The production line
Oil drilling technology
Rabid individualism
The Colt revolver, the 1911 automatic, Gatling (and others: Winchester, Spencer, Marlin, Vickers, Thompson, MAC-10, etc.)
Jazz
Sky scrapers & architecture
Movies and entertainment – creating a unique visual language
The Western
Baseball – American football – Basketball
Rock ‘n’ Roll (and HUGE contributions to music engineering)
Blue jeans, the Baseball cap
Space travel
The martini, “cocktail parties” & “tailgate parties”
The aluminum can
The atomic bomb (& energy)
The laser
The microchip
Information technology (networking, personal computer, super computers, programming development methods and project management, the hacker culture,…UNIX, indeed all major OS’s until LINUX, the PDA, the MP3 player, telephony, cell phone technology, etc.)
Video games
Silicon solar cell
Massive biomed advances including the artificial heart and countless important medical advances (…like breast implants, stem cell research, minimally invasive surgery, MRI, etc.)
The birth control pill
Fast food
Coke Cola
Van Halen
West Coast craft beer, wine, and spirits
Snowboarding
Mountain Biking
The porno industry
The helicopter
Lance Armstrong
Numerous emerging online bastions of humanity and “killer apps”: Google, wikipedia, Amazon, eBay, Netflix, IMDB … Fluther)
Countless innovative and world changing companies: FedEx/UPS, Apple, Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble, IBM, AT&T, HP, Intel, Ford, Cisco, Motorola, Pixar, Disney, McKinsey/Bain/Booz/Accenture/Etc. (business process improvement across all industries and nations)
Aerospace companies and technology leadership: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman Corp.
U.S. contribution to the Fortune 500
America’s Cup Dominance (historical and hopefully future)
Grace Kelly
College Football
U.S. based technology drives entire industries, often unbeknownst (i.e. Formula One.)
The creation of NATO and Israel
The architects for modern Japanese success in the Far East
A solid majority of the top 500 English language top ranking pop icons (e.g. Elvis Presley, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Superman, Mickey Mouse, Barbie, Michael Jordan, JFK, Frank Sinatra, Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Hugh Hefner, Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Steven Spielberg, Jimi Hendrix – etc. etc. etc..
California’s Silicon Valley GDP alone is larger than the country of France, 18 of the last 23 years.

The overwhelming creation of wealth in the U.S. has allowed for an astounding quantity and quality of philanthropists icons (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Mellon, Ford, Bill Gates, Astor, Morgan, etc. etc. etc. The U.S. continues to lead the philanthrocapitalist revolution. (e.g. Buffett and Gates). The U.S. has 11 of the 24 billionaires in the world, and a powerful majority of the world’s millionaires (72%). Los Angeles county alone has 268,138 millionaire households – more than all but a dearth of nations.

You know, just off the top of my head.

Of course not all these things are entirely developed in America. “America” = “U.S.A.” in every way. North/South America are just that.

And of course – finally – our absolute humility and lack of arrogance on the world stage!

Our diluted class system. In America you can become educated and/or make a lot of money and buy yourself some security, stability, better health and goodies, move in many circles of people. Elsewhere then others have told me where you are born, who your family has been and your ethnicity are factors money and education don’t always overcome or make less important.

Freedom of speech and the separation of church and state.

@ipso, yeah that about sums it up for me too.

Fluther.

The natural beauty of the national parks

The beauty of many of the women.
I love sight-seeing!

I love that America is the land of opportunity…I hate that so many have lost sight of that fact!

What I love about America (after having lived here):

In America, you can still have a dream and people will be happy for you if you achieve your dream and say, “Wow…he did so well! Maybe I can, too! I am so happy for him/her!” Genuine support for the underdog/little guy who does well.

Here it’s :“Look at him…who the hell does he/she think she is?” It’s the “tall poppy syndrome”...cutting a person down to size.

We are a country (no matter how bad it has gotten recently) of deep, unadulterated, big-whopping, OPTIMISM. If someone was to send an American a box of horse manure in the post, most Americans would smile and think, “The horse must be coming next! I always wanted a horse!”

You know what else I love about America? We HELP other people. We really, really DO CARE. People open doors for you, we smile and say, “hello”, we go and fill sandbags when the rivers rise, we answer questions on “Fluther”, we donate to food banks, we share what they have, we are an incredibly hospitable people, we send more money in crisis aid to foreign countries than any other country in the world. Look what we are doing in Haiti! We are a generous country.

Folks, this is NOT done anywhere else that I know and not on the scale that America does it. We genuinely like to help. I have dropped items on a sidewalk in the middle of crowded shopping areas here and no one bothered to help me. I was stunned when it first happened and now, I just don’t bother to even think about it, I start picking up my stuff. We are (for the most part) very friendly in America. It’s not that way in other parts of the world. A smile and a “Hello” will either bring a suspicious look or you get followed home by some bloke who thinks you fancy a romparooni! Sheesh! I still am friendly, I just learned to walk away much faster.: ) Now, before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, there are some very lovely people here, too——lots of them…but in general, it’s tough going at times.

You can drive all day and all night for an entire week and still be in America, with people who talk like you do, and eat like you do, and enjoy the same things you do.

The is also a drawback, since in Europe, you can enjoy so many different cultures in the same period of time.

It’s diversity. I love that we are such a melting pot of different ideas and cultures and looks.

There is a whole lot I love about America. It has places of stunning beauty—but so do lots of other nations. It have a great deal of liberty, but so do lots of other nations. However, in our diversity, we are rather unique.

Every time I’ve mentioned the uniqueness of American diversity, generally a Londoner or Canadian comes along and shuts me down. We Americans like to think we are especially unique in that, but we are not.

There are, however, I think like 6 nationalities where the population in the US is more than the entire native population. Crazy stats like more Irish in NYC than Dublin, more Italians in NYC than in Rome, and in America more Jews than Israel, more Norwegians than Norway, etc. etc.

Unique or not unique. There is not such thing as especially unique or any other modifier of unique.

Point taken, but in this case I think there is some irony there to be had there.

@Dr_Lawrence Your answer is true in a logical sense, but not in the general usage.

Education and economic structure.

The journey home!!....no…no..i’m just shitting you…honest. Seriously? I’m going to have to say the diversity. The people, the landscape, places of interest. Only in America right?

I don’t know what it’s like to live anywhere but in the U.S., but from everything I’ve read, seen in the media, and from my own experience over my lifetime, I consider myself exceedingly fortunate to be a citizen. I know there are plenty of things wrong with our governmental, economic and social systems, but two things I’ve always believed—and thank goodness, never been proved wrong about—is that our country is filled with good, well-intentioned people striving to make things better, and that I can achieve whatever I have the ambition and energy to achieve. Do I sound like a Pollyanna? So be it. That’s how I feel.

@Austinlad….....I echo your sentiments….let’s hear it for the Pollyannas (and Pollyandrews).

@DarlingRhadamanthus treading on dangerous linguistic ground: Polyandrous?

Encouraging people to think big.

Disneyland!

The Golden Age in American history——the 1950s and early 1960s.

The way they make television and movies appear “exciting” and “colorful”. In Canada, they can never do that, as most Canadian entertainment is on the boring side.

Capitalism——the idea that you can earn your dream if you really work at it. In Canada, you can do that too, but there seems to be more “red tape” here than in the United States. For example, you can work hard and earn money in Canada, but the government always takes a lot of your hard earned money away. In America, it seems the money you earn stays in your pocket more.

@MRSHINYSHOES Yeah. We just put it on the tab. Our kids can figure out what to do about it. Not our problem.

@ETpro I think we did a great job for our kids. We worked hard and toiled at it, but the problem is that the younger generation today don’t seem to appreciate it. :(

@MRSHINYSHOES I am pretty sure that’s what every generation thinks. I seem to recall Aristotle complaining about that. :-)

@ETpro Aristotle was correct——Every subsequent new generation is lazier and more unappreciative than the last! Lol.

I disagree with all you say But I’ll fight to the death your right to say it, Is by far the most important ethos America has given to the world ”” as far as this Australian believes, who lives in the Lucky country ””

Since the question is about my favorite things about America (I assume US), I will not mention politics or closed minded individuals.

What I will mention is the following: diversity, diversity and more diversity. I have lived in 10 states, visited 28 others. I have met a lot of good, decent people who really want the best for themselves and their families, and hope for the same for others. I have tasted the all kinds of great food, a lot ethnically based. In my travels and adventures, I have been struck by the willingness of people to help someone in trouble, and the gratitude when help is given.

The freedom!