As a side note, but perhaps related to all this, is a book called "Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values" by Michael Adams. It was a text that I read in a comparative culture class and it speaks directly to what BlackEleven is talking about, in regards to the US anyways. It's hard for Canadians to have a proper view of American society even though we watch it all the time. The myth is that we're actually becoming more like Americans in our values, when in fact, we're getting further away from them. So it's hard for us to understand why they are the way they are... we just don't think like them.
Here's a link to a short version of the survey he did...
http://fireandice.environics.net/sur...asp?surveyID=1
It's still fairly long though if you want to take it. Gives rather interesting results.