The Hindu Business Line : US democracy

This is with reference to "Mirror to US" (Business Line, March 22) on the past and present sins of the US. One cannot deny the truth of any of the statements in themselves. Also, one realises full well that the purpose of the diatribe is not to produce a fair and well-balanced analysis but to shake America and Americans out of their unjustified smugness about their "superiority"— moral and material.

My only defence of the US is not to deny its many sins over a period of time but rather to point out that it has committed many indecent acts but that the compensating factor is its frequently demonstrated capacity to use its democratic process to compensate for its excesses — usually taking too long but eventually doing so, as in the period following the McCarthy era, and its shifting away from its most extreme violations of civil liberties. America deserves a shaking up and the author did a good job of it.

Francis S. Bourne

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