This July 4 comment is adapted from my book What's So Great About America. For more information on that or my other books, go to dineshdsouza.com

America is today the most loved society in the world--and the most hated. At a time when we are constantly lectured about our nation's flaws, it is useful to be reminded of the other side of the story. This July 4 weekend, it's worth thinking about what this country does right. The forgotten truth is that America is still the most attractive society in the world, and its appeal is felt even by the children of the America-haters.

Whatever the flaws of American policy and American culture, let's remember that immigrants from every continent continue to brave dislocation and hardship to come to America . Why do they do it? The conventional wisdom is that immigrants come to for one reason: to make money. This notion is conveyed in the "rags to riches" literature on immigrants, and it is reinforced by 's critics, who like to think of America as buying the affection of outsiders through the promise of making them filthy rich. But this Horatio Alger narrative is woefully incomplete; indeed, it misses the real attraction of Ameica to immigrants, and to people around the world.

There is enough truth in the conventional account to give it a surface plausibility. Certainly America offers a degree of mobility and opportunity unavailable elsewhere, not even in Europe . Only in America could Pierre Omidyar, whose ancestry is Iranian and who grew up in , have started a company like eBay. Only in America could Vinod Khosla, the son of an Indian army officer, become a shaper of the technology industry and a billionaire to boot.

In addition to providing unprecedented social mobility and opportunity, America gives a better life to the ordinary guy than does any other country. Let's be honest: rich people live well everywhere. In fact if you are very rich, my advice to you is not to live in America . The reason is that in most countries, but not in the United States , money buys you the pleasure of aristocracy-the pleasure of being a superior human being. Americans, however, share a social ethic that is deeply egalitarian. Americans believe that no matter how much money Bill Gates has, he is not better than they are.

America's greatness is that it has extended the benefits of affluence, traditionally available to the very few, to a large segment in society. America is a country where "poor" people have television sets and microwave ovens, where maids drive rather nice cars, where plumbers take their families on vacation to Europe . Recently I asked an acquaintance in Mumbai why he has been trying so hard to relocate to America . He replied, "I really want to move to a country where the poor people are fat."

The typical immigrant, who is used to the dilapidated infrastructure, mind-numbing inefficiency, and multi-layered corruption of developing countries, arrives in America to discover, to his wonder and delight, that everything works: the roads are clean and paper-smooth, the highway signs are clear and accurate, the public toilets function properly, when you pick up the telephone you get a dial tone, you can even buy things from the store and then take them back. The American supermarket is a thing to behold: endless aisles of every imaginable product, many different types of cereal, fifty flavors of ice cream. The place is full of numerous unappreciated inventions: quilted toilet paper, fabric softener, cordless phones, disposable diapers, and roll-on luggage.

So, yes, in material terms America offers the newcomer a better life. Still, the material allure of does not capture the deepest source of its appeal. Recently I asked myself how my life would have been different if I had not come to America . I was raised in a middle-class family in India . I didn't have luxuries, but I didn't lack necessities. Materially, my life is better in the United States , but it is not a fundamental difference. My life has changed far more dramatically in other ways.

Had I remained in India , I would probably live my entire existence within a modest radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical caste, religious and socioeconomic background. I would face relentless pressure to become an engineer, like my father; a doctor, like a couple of my uncles; or a computer programmer. My socialization would have been almost entirely within my ethnic community. I would have a whole set of opinions on religion and politics and society that could be predicted in advance. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have been given to me.

By coming to America , I have seen my life break free of these traditional confines. At Dartmouth College, I became interested in literature, and switched my major to the humanities. Soon I developed a fascination with politics, and resolved to become a writer, which is something you can make a living doing in America, and which is not easy to do in India . I married a woman of English, Scotch-Irish, French, and German ancestry. Eventually I found myself working in the White House, even though I was not an American citizen. I cannot imagine any other country allowing a non-citizen to work in its inner citadel of government.

In most of the world, even today, your identity and your fate are largely handed to you. This is not to say that you have no choice, but it is choice within given parameters. In America , by contrast, you get to write the script of your own life. What to be, where to live, whom to love, whom to marry, what to believe, what religion to practice-these are all decisions that, in America , we make for ourselves. Here we are the architects of our own destiny.

Some critics, both in and abroad, have noted that this freedom to shape one's own life is not an unmixed blessing. Freedom can be used well or badly. Some Americans do indeed make mistakes with freedom, as the country's high divorce and illegitimacy rates suggest. These are unfortunate social trends, but we should remember that while freedom allows vice its scope, it also gives greater luster to virtue. It is no great achievement for an Indian couple to keep its marriage together, because the social stigma against divorce is prohibitive. By contrast, American couples who stay married deserve greater credit because they have chosen the good when the good is not the only practical option.

Those who have tasted the exhilaration of freedom-which entails responsibility for one's own choices and one's own life-can hardly imagine living in any other system. The core American idea is the "pursuit of happiness," which means that happiness is not a guarantee, but that you have a chance to find it for yourself. No wonder that so many young people throughout the world are magnetically attracted to what America represents: they find irresistible the prospect of being in the driver's seat of their lives. So, too, the immigrant discovers that America permits him to break free of the constraints that have held him captive, so that the future becomes a landscape of his own choosing.