Add my small voice to Stephen Chapman’s advice to refrain from self-righteous condemnation of other countries’ political systems (Op-Ed, Dec. 19). Many of our allies need human rights reform, but Mexico and some former members of the USSR are at least making a genuine effort.
Without cracking a history book I can offer this short list of U.S. human rights failures: slavery, Jim Crow laws, the Alien and Sedition Act, the Chinese Exclusion Act, imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, institutionalized harassment of groups like the Mormons and the McCarthy era.
Although these incidents are mostly behind us, any number of deplorable situations continue.
Finally, as during the Cold War, the people who decry oppression against Russians and Cubans are the quickest to resist liberalization at home.
