America's most important contribution to humanity may well be the promotion of Madisonian constitutional separation of church and state, an entirely new concept at the time. There are very few places that have emulated us about this, but the few that have set out to build a secular state have done well. Examples that come to mind are Japan after MacArthur and South Africa after Mandela. Other states that have drifted into the model of a nation under a God invariably find a despotic leader ready to assert that he is that God's spokesman like the Kaiser and Hitler. If the American model is accepted more widely we will approach a world of more liberty and more prosperity and that is a kind of globalization I could live with. More individual freedom and initiative and less coercion exercised from the top down. America's highest authority is We the People.