Being Swiss myself, I can for the life of me not figure out why you should be troubled by this fact. Do you feel threatened by us? I understand you're worried about the state of science and education in the U.S., but on the other hand you cannot honestly assume that 100% of scientific and technologic breakthroughs are performed on 6.1%[1] of the world's land mass?

I've been living in the U.S. for 3 months now, and the "American exceptionalism" assumption sometimes gets on my nerves..

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=U.S.+land+area+%2F+worl...