I was reading an interview today between George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, and Bill Moyers, a famous journalist known for his celebrity interviews with some depth.

In it, George Lucas talks about the nature of imagination and how he brought elements of obscure world culture into his movies, and I got to thinking how Lucas is an example of the genius of America.

Only in America could the Jews move from New York to California and found a new movie business. And only in such an industry could a titan like Lucas arise. Lucas sold the rights to Star Wars to Disney for four billion dollars (and they got it at a bargain) and is a very rich man from his endeavors. He was smart enough to retain the rights to all the sequels to the first movie and the rights to the toys, both of which have been very lucrative.

In America, there is a freedom to innovate. The large size of the population and the extreme wealth of the nation and the culture that provides elbow room to jostle all guarantee that in every generation a large handful of men will arise who make something special that affects the world. In the 1980s it was the personal computer and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. (There was a “person of the year” cover for Time magazine that featured the computer as the winning entry.)

If you have a powerful imagination, and the popular touch, you can get very wealthy in America. There have been others outside America who have accomplished the same thing, like J.K .Rowling of Harry Potter fame, who lives in Britain. But I think at this stage we are all living in a global American culture and all the successful stories fit into an American outlook, an American way of seeing things. So when Rowling becomes a billionaire as countless millions of those books are sold, that is almost a sign of America-as-the-world in action. And it is America that has led the way to protection of intellectual property. There was a time when governments offered no protection, and any company could make a copy of a writer’s work without paying him. In today’s age, we recognize the importance of patent protection for drugs, patents for tech, IP for artists and writers. Without these things, there would be much less incentive to create. And again, America has led the way in that respect.

For the first time in history, thanks to America, the artist is free. He has an independent economic life and doesn’t have to rely on patrons, the way the great Italian Renaissance artists relied on the Medici banking family to support them. The freedom of the artist — the freedom of a George Lucas — is one of the important important civilizational evolutions ever. The problem is that freedom is restricted to only the most successful. Linwood Barclay lives in a multimillion-dollar street in Oakville, Ontario, and Stephen King has multiple huge houses throughout Maine (Center Lovell and Bangor) and Florida, and they have got that way because the artist is free.

America created George Lucas, the visionary. Lots of other cultures would have been unable to. I think America is the most likable empire in history. The Roman Empire was venerated for centuries after its downfall, and British coins still have capital letter Latin inscriptions, but it was never very liked. America is the home of Mickey Mouse and Disneyland. Japan has its Hello Kitty, but there is a cloying cuteness about the creature that misses all the human touches that American adorability offers.

The center of world pornography is America. The raunchiest, most extreme videos come from America. Europe tries to give it a go, particularly Germany, but nobody does porn like the Americans. America is full of life. It does cute things like Mickey Mouse, it does sprawling space epics like Star Wars, and it does sexualized entertainment that probes the human id to the farthest reaches. America is a thrumming machine with a magnetic power to attract human particles to it.

When George Lucas set out to create his science fiction epic (and it is science fiction, despite Harrison Ford calling it “science fantasy” in an interview) he humanized it to a degree that it had lasting value. He followed Joseph Campbell’s edicts on “the Hero’s Journey” and stamped a blazing red meme-logo across the featureless blank black of space on the big screen. America is the hero.

America is John Wayne with his six-shooters. It is Dirty Harry decades later asking the punk if he fired all the bullets in his gun or does he have one left to finish the job. It is Austrian Arnold Schwarzenegger blazing guns in movies like Commando and all the others. America will let the poor die for lack of elite medical care they cannot afford, but it will save the world in so many other instances. It is a walking contradiction in terms.

There will always be another George Lucas waiting to come out in the wings in every generation in America. And he will always have a world reception of love and great financial success. Time is on America’s side.