Perhaps, but I contend every other civilization defines themselves by their differences with God not their differences with the US government. Our government is not defined by doing something different from somebody else, we define ourselves by the fidelity of maintaining rights given to us by God.
We are built on "rights" already owned by the citizen, pre-existing the government, whilst tyrannies are built from scratch upon man-constructed laws imposed upon their citizen.
God gave us liberty. This is a very large concept upon which our government is not defined as "having" but that we all have and our government is given specific responsibilites to protect the larger concept. Thus we are not a nation that is the opposite of a tyranny, per se. We are a nation that inadequately defends a supreme law, and thus we too are a tyranny to the degree we violate those rights, we cannot fudge with the permanence of those pre-exisitng rights, or laws.
A tyranny protects nothing larger than the power of the ruling elites, no matetr how benevolent it is to the people, becuase it does not recognize the pre-existance of liberty for the individual thus does not measure its success based on maintaining those rights.
A tyranny can grant far more luxuries, "liberties" and greater standard of living than the US but it still cannot compare itself directly to the US because it is entirely different and has different objectives.
The tyranny is the originator of all rights for their citizen. The US is not.
The US is not an originator of any right, but a protector of rights given by a supreme authority, God.
Two very different concepts which are apples and oranges.
(we can describe the differences between an apple and an orange but we cannot compare the "goodness" of one versus the other unless we have a larger, independent standard, that straddles both. IE one may taste bad, and the other taste good but only to the "supreme" being, who can taste both of them and apply his judgment to them, but still cannot rank one as a better apple than the other...etc)).
A tyrannical government therefore must compare itself to God, not the US. (the tyrannical government believes it has power akin to God so must compare itself to God. It believes God is an "orange" and thus seeks to become as orange-like as possible. That is its standard of measure. The liberty of the people is not a standard of performance, but a hindrance)
The US government might thusly compare itself to the police force of the tyrannical government, each of which enforces the rights from the "supreme" power. (ours is God, theirs is the elitists du jour)
We are the only nation, other than the Vatican, which accepts the supreme authority of God.
Thus we define ourselves against the standards set by God (how well we maintain the fidelity of God given rights), and not as a differential comparison to another government.
Thus the conflict between tyrannies and the US arises not because the tyrannies disagree with the US but because they are in conflict with God, and thus we, as an agent of God on earth become the recipient of their hostility (they can't fly planes into God's twin towers. they would if they could)
However, as soon as we lose our basis in God's authority then we are morally no better than any other nation. (which is precisely the argument and promotion of the leftists, global progressives, multi-culturists...anti-Christian...anti-Americans). Thus Why should we have individual liberty if it harms the good of the whole, and the newer man-made goal of the government is to promote the welfare of the whole, not protecting the rights of the individual??
This is exactly where we are at today. We have just about completely lost acceptance that our liberties are from God, thus there is no limit to the amount of tyranny to be imposed on the individual if it is simply argued that somehow one persons liberty may be injurious to the whole, thus it is incumbent upon the supreme authorities (man-made government) to remove those liberties and protect the larger man-made objectives of the government.
This is why all nations have been eventually destroyed in the past, their lack of permanent goals that protect the individual member. the goals being defined subject to the particular men in power at the time. Eventually it must produce conflict between diverging strata of thought within that society.
Men are weak. God is permanent. Any nation defined by men will collapse. Any nation defined by God must remain permanent.
The loss of God means the loss of the nation, eventually, inexorably, inarguably.
QED.
(I didn't mean to argue I was just looking for a diversion to justify procrastination from my physics research ;^))
What does the government have to do with it? These differences would assert themselves even in a situation "A, B, X, Y and Z walk into a bar..." - and the only government presence in a bar is the excise tax on the bottles inside and the police cruiser outside. Indeed, they would assert themselves even if these same A, B, X, Y, and Z ended on an uninhabited island, where there is no government - and no bar. They are centered on the tribe, language, race, culture, weltanschauung, predominant socio-psychological type and the sociology built around it. Huntington brings in religion as a convenient marker, but his use of it is imprecise at best: Western civ is not split into the catholic civ and several protestant civs, and Israel belongs to the Western civ as well, despite religion difference.