Look at my country, the US, who twice resisted getting dragged into the European mess but twice failed, and following ww2 our industry was dominated by war and our government burdened with policing the world - whose corruption of blatant after only a few generations. That's history for you.
I'm pretty fond of our republic as well, and we remind me of Rome, more than anything.
Not since Byzantium fell, 562 years, three weeks, and three days ago, has there been a nation that can legitimately claim to unite all strands of Europe. In fact, the US, with it's multiculturalism extending to every ethnicity, what with China overtaking Mexico in legal immigration, is quite Roman, in the sense that it extends itself, and it's ideals to every ethnicity. Being a Roman citizen was quite like being an American one - something you attain, not something based on ethnicity. Almost Spartan, really. (Hell, I'd consider Rome to be the equilibrium of Sparta+Athens).
We haven't had a Julius Caesar moment, and I guess the USSR would be our Carthage.
The US has potential that no other nation does. From our Civil War, to the ideals we championed in both World Wars, we, despite our current woes, have a better track record than almost any other polity. If you're to bring up slavery, I'll simply bring up that the country largely turned against slave owners, waged war upon them, killed them, sunk their ships, blockaded their ports, starved their cities, raped their women, invaded, burnt out their lands, freed their slaves, and destroyed their cities.
If Sherman's March to the Sea wasn't justice for slavery, then how much of the South must burn, and for how long?
Hell, compared to Romanian history, the US is doing great:
2,500 BC (approx.) - Greeks establish colonies, then Alexander the Great rolls in, and we all know what he's like.
100 AD (ish) - conquests of Trajan - his column, showing the conquest of Dacia is still used by Romanian researchers as a primary source, due to the utter destruction, and colonization of Dacia (the lands were settled with Roman soldiers who had formerly fought in the war of conquest, much like the Indian Wars)
Then, the Huns came, and fucked shit up, then the Byzantines, then the Mongols (yay), then the Turks, Cossacks, and any other little nasties coming across the Black Sea, until the Tsars started dicking with us, followed by Fascism, and then the Warsaw Pact, leading to 1989 - the revolution my birth parents fought in, the only violent revolution of the Eastern Bloc, and the one where we machine-gunned Ceaucescu on Christmas Day.
That's 2,500 years of being a single polity, though our name has changed from Dacia to Romania, but that was only like five hundred years into those 2,500.
In less than 10% of that time, the USA has gone from being a colony of Britain, to 50% of world GDP, and something like 90% of the world's surface tonnage in warships. 169 years, to be exact, 1776 (0% world GDP) - 1945 (50% World GDP).
That'd be like if Romania, a few generations after the conquests of Alexander the Great, had bested the Mongols in terms of conquest. (336-166 BC)