I regret seeing such ethnocentric, jingoist and generally myopic views as those expressed in Monday’s letter titled “U.S. is the best.”

Below are some reflections upon those views.

I feel that the ethnocentrism expressed in the letter is unfortunate, even if the author creatively bases a racist nationalism upon diversity. I’ve never seen that before.

Writing that the United States is the sole superpower because it has the best people is akin to writing that Nazi Germany took so much of Europe because the Aryan race was superior to other people.

To remedy this view, I suggest that Mr. Gonzales travel more and talk to people from those “deluded, inferior” nations.

He needs to experience how they live before he writes off their ways of life in jingoist adoration of his own comfy views and “the best life possible.”

If he talked to people from other countries, he would learn a lot — such as how to party in the Spanish streets, how to eat well in China, how to stay relaxed in the beautiful Austrian countryside, and why some people value the United Nations.

Even if this organization is “ineffective” and “pathetic,” it is the only defense that other nations have against the unchecked threat to international security “the world’s police” (a.k.a. U.S. military) presents.

Our military receives more money from its government than the militaries of about all the other governments combined.

It manipulates the internal workings of sovereign states, toppling democracies and instating hand-groomed dictators.

Meanwhile, U.S. corporations unjustly appropriate foreign natural resources and labor from the same countries. This needs to stop.

We should NOT mind our own business internationally; that’s isolationism in an inevitably interconnected world.

However, we don’t have to strong arm other nations into following our ways as seems to be the current tendency of U.S. foreign policy and economics.

Americans should proactively cooperate with others to solve global problems.

We can start with international debt.

If we are really concerned about relieving debt, don’t shut down the United Nations.

Instead, first stop our government from intimidating the rest of the United Nations (one of the reasons it does “more harm than good”) so it can be a truly effective alliance like the one imagined by Mr. Gonzales.

Second, fight the WTO, IMF and the World Bank. Find other people who care about the threats global capital poses to the small people of the world and work to decharter the corporations that benefit from globalization schemes at the sake of human lives, livelihoods and the land.

Perhaps before we consider forming an alliance with “real” democracies, we should try “real” democracy here, not the farce that we have.

Real, direct democracy is about the citizens meeting face-to-face at the local level to discuss, debate and decide collective issues at home and sending their fully recallable delegates up to the next highest level to decide the issues there.

It’s not about a system where a minor fraction of 250 million everyday people choose several hundred privileged people to rule over them.

Don’t get me wrong — our government is better than what they’ve got in many other places, but that doesn’t make it the best.

Finally, the leaders of India, Pakistan and Chechnya probably can name some of our congressmen.

The United States’ quasi-imperial status means that international media is full of news about us, the least we can do is learn a little bit more about everyone else.

In that case, I suppose that Mr. Gonzales can start his crusade to educate our politicians.

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Michael Pitula

Senior

Environmental science and Spanish