xtian wrote:And of course all the scientists and philosopher, werner von braun, Wittgenstein and shit.
Them's Germans.
You're thinking of the folk (yes, slave owners some of them, I know) who came up with separation of church-and-state. Folk like Jefferson, Franklin, Paine.
Someone who not just studied the stars, but formulated why the heck we should look for 'em, Dr. Sagan. Men who formulated labor rights, like Eugene Debbs. The man who created the middle class, a middle class of laborers, who had a vision of worker's rights and economic equality far beyond what most European countries have, Franklin Roosevelt. I shouldn't even have to mention Dr. King. Maybe Henry David Thoreau, who was a century before his time with his ideas about ecology?
Or people like the inventor of the telephone, Elisha Gray, or the electronic, no-moving-parts TV, Philo Farnsworth. The gang around William Shockley, who created the transistor?
Oh, not inventors, actual scientists. How about Michael Gazzaniga, who discovered the left/right separation of the brain and its workings?
Linus Pauling who, before going a bit crazy with Vitamin C, worked out the fundamental of chemical bonds, for which he got a Nobel?
Melvin Calvin, who explained how plants absorb carbon dioxide? Robert Millikan, the man who was the first to quantify the charge of an electron? Richard Feynman, who's description of the interaction of light and matter was the first theory where quantum mechanics and special relativity agree? Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer, who first described superconductivity? Barbara McClintock, who discovered that some bits of DNA can move around in the genome? Rachel Carson, who forced the world to pay attention to the consequences of pesticide use? B.F. Skinner, pioneer of behaviourism? Stanley Milgram who's famous experiment gave us important insight into the nature of obedience, who described the "six degrees of separation" phenomenon?
Let's face it.
The USA has produced some pretty good contributions and contributors to human civilization.
A lot of shite, also. But our lands, Belgium and Germany, certainly got loads and loads of those, too.