Kulturkampf

[Potato]

This all informs our culture and in a way the rest of the world really hates: Americans don't know their place. We never "read the room" or truly respect unspoken status. (Aussie culture is probably most similar and it has the very same kind of English and far away from the home lineage. Like Canada it just never broke and so didn't have to ever truly reimagine itself as a separate culture, also the colonial period was much shorter.)

Australia is an interesting comparison because our history is somewhat unique, even among the former English colonies. We were established as a single penal colony, but quickly broke out of that and became a strange mixture of free settlers, convict settlements and freed convicts. The distance from England meant we were both dependant on, yet independent from, the motherland. Add to that multiple waves of immigration.

A huge factor in our development as a liberal democracy is the sheer wealth that was generated by the early colonies. In 1890 we had the highest GDP per capita in the world and that wealth created a far less rebellious nature in our culture than the US.

The culture that developed is a strange mixture of general compliance and individual rebellion. We inherited our laws and legal system from England, but not its class system. We adopted a liberal democratic system with a strong focus on individualism, but we are a nation of rules followers and consensus finders. Our general lack of social and class conflict makes our political spectrum relatively narrow. 

Australian conflict with the rest of the world is based around, "Why the fuck can't you all just get along?" What we don't understand is that our experience is unique. We're rich, relatively culturally homogenous, and have no real class system. Other places are not like that.