My hunch is that most of the Western nations are looking for policy guidance to Washington...

Now there is a scary thought. We need a counter-meme. (Mike Godwin has a fun article about how he invented a counter-meme and watched it spread, in the latest *Wired*.) My meme is: "Boy, don't immitate what *Washington* (or insert your country's capital here) is doing, those Americans (or whoever) have let their government go *totally* haywire." This requires a little support. For America it's easy (your mileage may vary): "Americans all think they're outlaws and ignore what's going on in government. They just buy lawyers and accountants and don't think about it. The people in Washington get no feedback from the public so they watch TV for ideas. Bad cop shows, mostly." I think it works best if you only talk about one country this way in any given context. If two people use the same meme about different countries in the same context, they can say, "Is it that way *there*, too? Oh, my." --Steve - - - - - - - - - - Steve Witham's .sig contains four a's, one b, two c's, two d's, twenty six e's, six f's, two g's, three h's, ten i's, one j, one k, two l's, two m's, twenty n's, seventeen o's, one p, one q, five r's, twenty nine s's, twenty-one t's, four u's, six v's, twelve w's, four x's, five y's, and one z.