re: Divides between the United States and Europe
That's a pretty good analysis of the differences between Europe and the US. You Europeans have a chosen a different balance point on the scale stretching from individual liberty to the common good, and the statistics consistently show that that choice produces a superior outcome: Longer life expectency, lower infant mortality, better access to health care, more equal distribution of wealth, more leisure time (to "work to live" rather than "live to work"), and on and on through just about all measures of outcome.
Or to put it another way, the European path is truer to the mission statement laid out in the US Constitution:
...form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...
I know that sort of observation infuriates the Right, but I don't understand why they're not proud that Europe is building on the lessons of America. The circle has come around: America built on the achievements of its European forebears, now Europeans are building on the American success. It's a compliment.
Europe is continuing the great experiment of Democracy, while American Rightists are determined to entomb it in a shrine with the premature epitaph "Mission accomplished". Human progress never ends; what changes is who carries the torch.