When outside Rome, do Romans do as others do?
I'm not picking on Romans; many of them are adaptable and follow the customs of the places they visit. In fact, the Italian version of "When in Rome" is "Paese che vai, usanza che trovi."
Many Americans expect anybody visiting or moving to this country to speak English. Some of these same Americans, when visiting other countries, expect everyone to speak English.
Many American governments have had no reservations about interfering in other countries, militarily, covertly through bribes and assassinations, and overtly by public statements of criticism. Conversely, those same governments get very upset when other countries or groups want to take military action against the U.S or attempt to bribe or kill American officials. Fortunately, American response to criticism is often muted.
The ultimate hypocrisy is having enough nuclear weapons to blast many countries "back to the Stone age" for our defense. But if any of the countries we have long standing disputes with feel threatened by the U.S., we work hard to prevent them from having nuclear weapons. Given the number of politicians, fortunately not yet in the administration, have called for large scale bombing of some countries.
I had some more "When in Rome" stuff to rant about, but I discovered I wrote similar stuff over a year ago. See "How portable should customs be?"
