Being Scandinavian, I do not really partake of whichever American regressions you may be thinking of.

I most certainly admire and find inspirational a lot of the values that built the US from the ground up. Hard work, frugality, dedication, diligence, and self-reliance, to name a few of the qualities that not least Northern Europeans brought to the expanding frontier.

Nor did they particularly hold with the slavery ways of the South.

Also, you may recall, there was a war fought over that issue.