Waleed Rally says that the genius of American patriotism is that it manages to be inclusive. The same cannot easily be said of Australian patriotism, and certainly cannot be said of the European version, which is so often expressed in moral panics about the supposed disloyalty of migrants. He then asks: 

What accounts for the difference? At first blush, the answer is as simple as it is patriotically appealing: that the patriotism of minorities simply mirrors the patriotism of the majority. That is, patriotism is a result of social pressure. If we only demand it stridently enough, our minorities will learn to love us. Or, to put it more acerbically, multiculturalism is a death wish. Such has been the diagnosis of a thousand culture warriors in recent years. Europe's flirtation with multiculturalism has killed its sense of self and allowed its recalcitrant minorities to disappear into a fog of cultural relativism and escape any sense of loyalty to the nation. Europe's multiculturalism is even said to have fostered subcultures hostile to it. 

There is something different operating in America, something more subtle, complex and ingenious than the brutish social politics of monoculturalism. Something that is not ultimately about multiculturalism or migration, but about a more comprehensive phenomenon: national identity. There is something in the way America thinks and talks about itself that enables widespread national loyalty and astonishing diversity to coexist. Even its rioters rarely shun their American identity; instead, they assert their place in the nation. 

America, like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, is part of the New World and created from settlement (or conquest) and migration. This creates a fundamentally different dynamic, for it is immediately apparent that there is nothing organic about these nations. The vanquished indigenous aside, everyone is a migrant to some degree, which necessarily fosters a more fluid, open notion of national identity: one that is not so firmly anchored in ethnicity as in Europe. Yet this does not explain why the United States should be any different to Australia. 

Rally says that America has its creed, but one that corresponds to no particular religious tradition. It is a civil creed constructed on the central political idea of individual liberty. The US was settled by people fleeing religious persecution in Europe; it was thus almost inevitable that freedom, especially of religion, would become the new nation's touchstone. A people who had struggled to attain religious freedom could not easily found a nation on principles that denied that right to others: Theirs is a sense of self that is forward-looking, oriented towards constant improvement. 

In contrast the message of Australia's staunchest patriots is that ours is a great country with a great history and no need for change. It is a message that replicates the European sense of national self, one bound in a fixed history. The history wars were so intense in Australia for the very reason that our sense of national pride is not forward-looking.