We believed families, churches and local communities took care of those who could not take care of themselves by VOLUNTARILY giving aid, with accountability so that aid did not go to those who were morally unfit and therefore had caused their own fall into poverty.
We believed in hard work, the RULE of LAW, and the inviolate belief in personal property rights (which comes straight from commandments 8 & 10 of the Ten Commandments thou shall not steal, thou shall not covet).
Families recognized it was their own responsibility to educate their children in the faith, values, morals and precepts that they believed, and not hand their children over to the state to educate.
People were God fearing and believed the Scriptures were God's Word, therefore they had an internal character restraint against corruption (dishonesty, theft, abuse of power). This meant that local and national government representatives were for the most part closer to the intent of being servant leaders, rather than corrupt oppressors.(Of course there were always exceptions, but in general these were the result of a moral, godly and God fearing nation).
I could go on but that is a few things for starters
http://www.joelskousen.com/Philosophy/principledapproachtolaw.html
INTRODUCTION
The proper purpose of law and government is to protect fundamental rights, maintain man’s agency to choose (when not violating others’ rights) and to resolve conflicts between individuals and groups in a fair and just manner. Unfortunately, the enforcement powers of government have most often been used to restrict fundamental rights and provide special privileges and benefits to groups less than the whole. Legalized government tyranny has taken many forms, including dictators, oligarchies and even democratic majorities (who use the power to vote and tax to extract benefits from the most productive classes of society). Such deviant forms of government have been far more common than the ideal forms precisely because the underlying premises used to establish governmental authority over others have been based upon arbitrary, conflicting or insufficiently precise assumptions (“might makes right,” “Divine right of kings” or even “common law”).
The United States Constitution came the closest to establishing a limited government based upon individual rights, but failed to define those rights, leaving the courts and legislatures free to introduce new privileges and false rights that have given rise to our present benefit-corrupted citizenry, who prosper on government intervention and redistribution of wealth. These and other loopholes in the broad and trusting language of the founders have allowed the enemies of liberty to bring us to the point where almost every true fundamental right is severely curtailed, and the restoration of original intent is nigh unto impossible—whether by the ballot box or an appeal to our representatives.
The purpose of the proposed Principles of Just Law and Government is to set the groundwork for a new and more formidable wall of protection for fundamental rights. It incorporates all the best principles of the US Constitution and declares additional principles as necessary to fill the gaps in law and philosophy which the original founders wrestled with but were not able to resolve under the exigencies of their own crisis period. These proposed principles provide the hope that we might once and for all resolve the core issues of law and government and provide a stable and comprehensive basis for unity—at least among those who view themselves as conservatives of liberty.
“first loyalty was to God (no king but King Jesus),”
I’d rather have a king than be ruled by Obama.
I am Catholic but I would agree with this at least in great part. American identity is deeply Christian and in a deeply Protestant way: that is viewing anyone professing Christian faith as another denomination of Christianity, and therefore tolerable. The least tolerable are Catholics (Orthodox were practically unknown at the time) because with them the denominational model breaks; but on the other hand, the model can be extended to them and to the Jews, so long as each gets his operational freedom and afford the same to others.
However, we should not forget the North-European ethnic core: English, German, Scandinavian; other European nations and the African race blended in with significant difficulty.
I would add to your list that America is very rural. In Europe a farmer is someone who did not make it to the city yet; in America the farmer is, perhaps, not versed in languages and the opera, but he has a certain heroic dimension to him, and in fact is a better stock precisely because the city did not corrupt him.
This, too, explains American melting pot: one who farms is by definition connected to the soil not by virtue of ancestry but by virtue of labor.
Anything else?