"We were astounded that 150 years, to the English, is "recently".  On that same trip, another friend took us to a restaurant in a small English hamlet.  The restaurant was 300 years old!"

This -- and the rest of what you said -- is true, but you have to realize (and you probably do) that this country is scarcely two and a third centuries old. (Three and two thirds centuries if you start with the first European settlements. But even then, Americans can have (relatively) long memories as well.

How many Americans in certain parts of this country "remember" the war crimes of Generals Sherman and Sheridan during the War of Northern Oppression? Quite a few I would imagine.

And there's still a bit of animosity between Kansans and Missourians which has carried over from the 1850's.

And numerous other things as well.

Give us time . . . we'll get there.

I have to take issue with Chip Saunders' comment about "lo-o-o-ong memories" in Europe.  It only seems so, Chip, because "U.S. persons", (and even those few I would call Americans) have, in general, neither memory nor historical perspective.  This is why, when people who have chosen to educate themselves in history suggest a pattern of events as indicative of "a long train of abuses", they're derided as "conspiracy theorists".  It's also why some of those very people will go off the deep end, and actually deserve the derision.

I was lucky enough to be given an historical perspective that most in this country will never have, nor do they even want, on a trip to England in 1996.  My wife and I had gone to visit friends, and one of them was showing us around Kensington Park.  As he guided us, he mentioned that Kensington Park, surrounding Kensington Palace, had been, "only recently opened to the public."  When we asked how recently, his answer was, "150 years ago".

We were astounded that 150 years, to the English, is "recently".  On that same trip, another friend to us to a restaurant in a small English hamlet.  The restaurant was 300 years old!

The rest of Europe has the same kind of longer term perspective, and the families that controlled various regions (even those "divvied-up" and renamed in the last century or so) are still alive and kicking, for the most part.  They remember what they had, and they intend to have back what was taken from them by an upstart, still in its infancy. 

Would that Americans had such "lo-o-o-ong memories".  We wouldn't be facing what we are these days. 

 We short-memory Americans sometimes can't fathom the looooooooong memory that europeans and the rest of the world tends to have. Nobody ever really forgives and forgets in the rest of the world.