“What makes us American?” asks the voice in the official video on American citizenship. The answer is simple: “A four-page document drafted more than 200 years ago, the Constitution: a document defining the form of government of the United States. It is the principles of our Constitution that unites us as a nation.” Cardinal principles from which much is derived: from the principle of citizenship not based on ethnic identity, as in Europe, but on adherence to an ideological-political creed; to that of equality based on equal opportunity and therefore on a strict meritocracy; to giving understood as a form of ‘restitution’ to society, and therefore as a moral obligation rather than a free act of generosity; to the importance of explaining the extraordinary gravity of lies.

Behind a deceptively superficial appearance, America is a profoundly different country to any European nation.