Noah's thread is interesting. I would try to answer the question two other ways: one simple, one a bit counterintuitive. /1
The simple version is one Matthew Yglesias already came up with years ago: American products have global reach because they are already design to succeed in a diverse society. Our movies work for many audiences because they have to work for a diverse American audience. /2
The counterintuitive answer starts by pointing out that Tucker Carlson has the question upside down (as usual). It doesn't take effort to make societies diverse, it takes effort to keep them monocultural. /3
People naturally move and mingle across territory. European countries started out diverse; their governments homogenized them. That cost immense amounts of blood and treasure. /4
They did this because they couldn't figure out how to impose political control without homogenizing society, and then keeping out the unwanted. But America starts from the premise: what if instead of expending all that energy to keep people out, you just let them in?
What America (and other immigrant countries like Canada and Australia) have done is to figure out the necessary institutional and civic-culture integration framework in order to let in large numbers of people and set their energies free. /6
Looked at this way, it's not exactly that diversity is the strength. It's that building a system that welcomes diversity, instead of wasting energy on enforced conformity, allows you to unleash the energy of everybody who wants to come. And that's what makes America great. /end
