Actually, I've got way more to say about this than just that the American way is best.
If you're describing the location of something of an umbrella that's a bit to the left of a bookshelf in your room to someone over the phone so that they can retrieve it for you, you wouldn't start by saying the umbrella is a bit to the left. If you started there, the now frustrated person you're on the phone with would ask you what the umbrella is to the left of, still unable to even act on any of the information you've given them, since it could be to the left of anything.
You might then tell them that it's to the left of a bookshelf, and they'd still be frustrated with that answer because they still can't determine anything from what you've told them. Which bookshelf? You'd tell them that it's the bookshelf in your room. Now, finally, after 10 frustrating seconds of back and forth confusion, the person on the other end of the call can finally retrieve the umbrella a bit to the left of the bookshelf in your room for you. Wouldn't it have been easier if when they asked you where your umbrella was, you responded first by saying that it was in your room?
If you do that, then they can immediately start towards your room, as you tell them that there's a bookshelf in your room. No sooner than when you have finished telling them about the bookshelf, they will have laid eyes on that bookshelf in your room, and you can finish by saying that the umbrella is to the left of it. This way, the person on the phone finds the umbrella without any trouble and is on their way to bring it to you before the alternate universe version of them who is receiving the umbrella's location in the reverse order from you has even gotten you to finally divulge which room the bookshelf is in.
Here's another example. Suppose you have a big pile of sticks of varying sizes and you want to lay them out so that, while using the least amount of sticks, you place them in an unbroken line from where you stand to a point six feet in front of you. In order to accomplish this, you wouldn't start by laying down the small sticks first because you'll probably find that you use up all those small sticks before the end and the next smallest stick could overshoot the 6 foot mark. That approach would be inaccurate and inefficient. What you should do is grab the stick that looks just a bit shorter than 6 feet and lay it down first and then use the small sticks to do the fine work of getting very close to exactly the 6 foot mark.
The point is, when you're trying to get to or describe something in space, you shouldn't start with the small details and work your way to the large ones, because the smaller ones are usually useless without the context of the larger ones.
So it is with these dates. 23 February, 2018. What does the 23 tell you on its own? Nothing. Nobody has any idea what date you might be referring to by saying 23. Compare that to February. That tells you a lot. A lot of things happen specifically in February. Most Februaries have things that happen during them that are similar to other Februaries, so you can start inferring things about this date right away if you start by saying February. That's because February is the room, or bookshelf, or large stick, to the 23's a bit to the left, or small stick.
In the MM/DD/YYYY format, you start with the big important part which immediately tells the reader something about the date, and then follow it up with the specific day which clarifies exactly to which day of the year the date refers. Thus, the American format is better because you can immediately interpret the meaning of the date from the first part of the full date, meanwhile the other way puts a number first that is meaningless until you read on.
I think that's case closed!
Here's some extra thoughts I had about describing specific times and places though. I don't think it's a coincidence that there are parallels in describing times and places. After all, time and space are technically one thing, apparently. I guess one way of seeing that they are at least inseparable from each other is by thinking about how you would universally describe your location right now. If there were 3D coordinates that could address all of the universe we could use them to pin down exactly where you are right now. However, if at a later date we looked at those coordinates and went to where they said you were, we'd run into a problem. You were on Earth, and Earth is moved since then! In fact everything in the whole universe is constantly moving; that's time after all. So if you really wanted to accurately describe where you are right now you have to not only say the location in space, but also the location in time. It's like this for anything you're trying to describe if you try to very precisely and in universal terms describe where it is. I think probably the only reason we don't need to usually add a time to things' locations is similar to why we don't need to worry about relativistic effects on a daily basis: that sort of hard physics just doesn't effect things as small and relatively low energy and slow moving as us human beings.
Heck, speaking of rime, I'm tired, I should go to bed.
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