Evan,

>I heard someone in the media say "The 20th Century was the American Century". I think this is true. But how did it happen?
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>The US was late to the Industrial Revolution because of its civil war. In addition, the US was quite isolationist. In the late 1800's and early 1900's Americans started to innovate and where at the leading edge of electricity, radio and flight. The two world wars gave the US economy a good kick in the pants.
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>Why didn't Mexico or Canada beat the US in growth? The European countries were for the most part flattened by World War II and in economic disarray.

All of what the others wrote plus a few more I'd wager.

1) Religious freedom which drew a lot of folks from around the world.

2) Political freedom which flowed from the above and added to the flow.

3) Economic Opportunity. Remember, until around 1917 we had no Income Tax. Gold drew a lot of folks early on too.

4) Something I'd call the Composite Character of the nation. A kind of optimism plus willingness to work hard (see #2) that like a meterological low pressure area just 'pulled' folks here.

5) A LOT of land. Now Canada and Mexico also have a lot of land as well so this might not be as significant.

I think the Roman Catholic influences have tended to cause folks to be too dependent in their general outlook on life and this was also a factor - though certainly much more ambiguous I suppose. Still, by contrast the early settlers here almost died out the first winter as everything was socialized in a goofy attempt to build the City of God here. They learned from this and the next year after everyone had their own plot of land there was a huge abundance - which led to that thanksgiving dinner but not the holiday. <g>

IOW, the earlier settlers learned a huge lesson about free enterprise, the incredible advantage to ownership of private property and its benefits.

The innovation stemmed directly from the notion that God had created a universe that was 'ordered' and as such the scientific method, where by recreating an experiment multiple times would create the same results. This thought process (whether held by people of faith or not) was the absolute intellectual underpinning of all that followed. That is, the presumption of order. Take that presumption away and you lose the ability to 'know'.