Replies

Thank you for your prompt and thoughtful reply - your ideas are very good and I will implement them. I already speak French, Spanish, Italian and German, and it is because of this that I am looking for ways to describe my feelings that I can have translated in my head before the conversations start - I still have trouble speaking some languages "on the fly". I don't want to lecture anybody, but I would like to find ways to be encouraging to them in pursuit of a more self-reliant system of government.

You didn't hear a word I said. You really didn't.

Individuals can't change systems of governments, at least not at your level. Try to get that concept firmely entrenched in your brain. Really try hard.
And, to be honest, it's rather an arrogant attitude for one individual to try, through another individual, to change their entire system of government. It IS lecturing, criticizing and elitism. There is no other way to describe it.

If someone were conversing with YOU and very nicely telling you that the system of government we have is nice, but THEIRS is really better, then you would probably become defensive. You would find it arrogant, abrasive and downright rude of him to think that HE would believe that OUR government system needed ANY alteration.
You would also have to admit that YOU, as an individual, are, in no way in the universe, going to be able to change our system of government. In fact, the idea is ludicrous.
The reverse is equally true.
Even George Bush, who IS in that position as an individual, assiduously avoids lecturing Vladimir Putin on how his system of government should be.

You are very nice and polite but you really didn't hear a word I said. After all your nice words you STILL said: "I don't want to lecture anybody, but I would like to find ways to be encouraging to them in pursuit of a more self-reliant system of government."
You sound EXACTLY like a proselytizing Mormon, intent on converting even though you KNOW that your, um, "missionary" work will be unwanted and DEEPLY resented.

My opinion? You will forge ahead with your plan of insulting foreigners, only you will fool yourself into thinking that you are being constructive and helpful. Your ENTIRE idea is arrogant, insulting and extremely elitist.
Unfortunately, you don't see that at all and that says a lot about your personality and character. Perhaps it is only youth and inexperience.
Sad to say, you won't have A CLUE as to why they will so deeply resent you.