Originally Posted by
Iamcatbug
But then if you look at the ancestry of those people a lot of them descend from Europeans, or if you really want to go all out you could argue that technically all inventions are from Africa. Given that is where humanity apparently originated.
The only thing i really dislike about America is the conception that some people have that Europe is a country not a continent.
I did say (in an earlier post) that broad, common elements that define a civilisation will be central to any participating states, cultures etc despite some differences etc. The EU's remaining members have much more in common with US than they will ever have with China.
The political philosophy of the US wouldn't have been possible without Greece, Rome, the Magna Carta, the Bible, Hobbes, Locke etc. Right now I have more in common with a dead Charlemange than a living Xi Jinping.
The thing that made America stand out within its shared civilsation was its commitment to citizen sovereignty - meaning power resided with the people vs royals, military, oligarchs etc. That's a reason citizens have a right to keep their weapons. If nobody can have arms then the people are not ultimately in sovereign power.
People can hear the term "American Exceptionalism" and think it means the people are exceptional and that's not what it means. The American "exception" is the source of ultimate power - the people. A baby born in US and put in cannibal society will be a cannibal. A cannibal baby put in US wont be a cannibal (maybe soon though lol) . So the "exceptional" bit has nothing to do with personal make-up.
Another individual feature is US formed with acknowledgment of a "creator" who is the source of human rights. The French Revolution didn't have that and was secular. But that feature would still be central to Western Civilisation. Europe is more hostile to that idea because it had a longer history of clerical abuses and tips more secular. Many more people go to churches in US than in France but US and France still exist in same civilisation and have much more in common than not.
Outside of Western Civilisation there are broad differences so I don't see general shared lines of development. As uplifting civilisation declines debasing cultures rise. Rome was followed by barbarian hordes. Not many sophisticated political refinements are possible. While all people might be created equal all cultures are not. Some cultures have a central appetite to destroy individual dignity. If a cannibal ponders thoughtfully and then says to their mates "humm - there's something wrong with eating people" - they end up in the soup pot.
An any case, across the board, you currently see Western Civilisation everywhere fraying at the edges and that's a bad sign as civilsations go.