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What is the glue that holds Americans together?  Amy Chua, the John Duff Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a noted expert on ethnic conflict and globalization, writes in the preface of her book, //Day of Empire//,

“The United States is perhaps the quintessential example of a society that rose to global dominance through tolerance. Of course, for much of its history the United States was no more an exemplar of human rights than were the Romans or the Mongols. Americans kept slaves; they brutally displaced and occasionally massacred indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, from the beginning, through a genuinely revolutionary commitment to religious freedom as well as a market system unusually open to individuals of all classes and diverse nationalities the United States attracted, rewarded, and harnessed the energies and ingenuities of tens of millions of immigrants.”