What did actually make the U.S. great?

Because, we were.  The 20th century truly was a U.S. century.

Please note, I did not say "American century".  Our seeming belief that we are the only country over the span of 2 continents worthy of consideration is endemic of one of the problems with this county.  We think we own the place.  The fact that the rest of the world lets us speaks to our influence.  In 1917, we were "The Yanks" and our soldiers "Doughboys".  At one time the British thought to simply absorb our numbers into their command.  That had all changed by the end of the 20th century.

But fighting wars wasn't what made us great.  Wars don't make anything great.  Extreme situations do, however, shine a light on what already exists.  Germany underestimated our ability to mobilize, twice.

In my opinion, what made us great was our belief in ourselves.  Many things were considered impossible until we did them.  "You can't fight on two fronts." was actually printed on U.S. propaganda during World War II.  We started out the century finishing the Panama Canal.  We turned out attention to the Mississippi River and made it navigable in a way Mark Twain would have thought impossible.  We went to the moon (no, that is not up for debate).

I think what made us great can be summarized by a story usually used to criticize us.  We wanted a pen that could write in zero gravity.  We knew pencils existed.  We made a pen that could write in zero gravity.  We did not take the easy way out.  We wanted something and we made it happen.  Yes, it was expensive.  Yes, it seems excessive.  And, yes, that didn't matter.

But now, it is a new century.  There was several attempts at electric cars by U.S. manufactures at the end of the 20th century.  General Motors EV1 was the most famous, but Ford and Chrysler also built some electric vehicles between 1996 and 2002.  All of these models were discontinued without actual production runs.  Then something happened that has become common in the 21st century, someone outside the U.S. took the risk.

Toyota launched a production hybrid in 1997.  Honda followed in 1999.  I particularly remember a commercial aired for the Honda Insight on 1/1/2000.  I also remember not seeing that commercial again.  At a hostel in Washington DC, I remember the hope that commercial inspired and the defeat I felt as I protested the inauguration of an oil man.

In 2008, work was completed on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC),  It dwarfs the U.S. Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and is now the center for global experimentation in the area of particle physics.

We still have the drive.  We still attract the dreamers.  But, something has changed.  We as a nation won't take the risk.  We have become frightened.  We forgot that our economy was built by men like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk.  It was not built by anyone at Goldman-Sachs.  It was not built by the people at Apple and Atari that fired their founders.  We forgot that technology is what got us here.  We forgot that looking backwards gains you nothing.  We forgot that the word "impossible" may just be a suggestion.

It is time we remembered.  It was time we remembered that progress happens whether you like it or not.  It is time to create a solar panel that the world buys in droves, not a coal plant the world mocks.  It is time for us to accept the software industry as an industry.  It is time for us to be less concerned about milking old patents, and more concerned about filing new ones.  It is time for us to be less concerned about steel exports, and more concerned about semiconductor exports.  In short, it is time to move into the 21st century.  We can still make it a U.S. century.