I will paste some more text to answer Aleksei question about Australia and New Zealand.
To find the roots of American exceptionalism, you have to start at thebeginning — or even before the beginning. They go back to our mothercountry. Historian Alan Macfarlane argues that England never had apeasantry in the way that other European countries did, or as extensivean established church, or as powerful a monarchy. English society thushad a more individualistic cast than the rest of Europe, which wascentralized, hierarchical, and feudal by comparison.
It was, to simplify, the most individualistic elements of En*glishsociety — basically, dissenting low-church Protestants — who came tothe eastern seaboard of North America. And the most liberal fringe ofEnglish political thought, the anti-court “country” Whigs andrepublican theorists such as James Harrington, came to predominatehere.