You make a pursuasive case about the identity question. (Citing books your oponent has not read (except Gellner's) is an effective debating tactic.) Certainly, the US has a real identity, history, and tradition(s) by this point. I'll have to rething my position on their being a qualitative difference between the US and European countries here.

Probably Hartz's book should be viewed not as a destriction of an objective cultural reality, but as an attempt by a liberal to marginalize conservatives. I used to really believe what he argued: that in the US, there can be no authentic conservatives. But having read up a little on the history of American evancelicalism, it now strikes me that Harz does what many liberals do: simply ignore evangelicalism as irrelevant for understanding American culture. Obviously, this is harder to do today than it was in 1955, when Hartz wrote his book.

The rest of your remarks are amusing. Yes, I forgot about Prussia. So more than just a couple of decades of conquest.

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns