Roger Pulvers' comparison with the United States — in his July 12 article, "Crimes happen, but are the criminals 'one of us' or 'one of them?'" — looked like more of an apple-to-plum comparison. The Australian and Japanese societies are both offshoots of European socialism. The U.S. is not socialist, although the present administration is trying to change that. The U.S. is a republic and, yes, I get the parallels to Rome. But we're talking about a country with a population of over 325 million, while Japan is the size of California (and has less than 40 percent of America's population).

As far as crime is concerned, the author misrepresents the U.S. as a crime-riddled country. A comparison based strictly on numbers misses a large part of the equation. The U.S. is made up of many different cultures and peoples, not one homogenous society sprinkled with a few gaijin.

Of the 2.3 million prisoners in federal, state and local jails, 47 percent are there for nonviolent crimes. If anything, this large prison population shows that if individuals are going to commit a crime, they are not going to get away with it.

The author closes with several questions, each containing the operative word "we." The U.S. was founded by individuals literally carving out a frontier existence. This has always been the core of our culture as a society and is often lost on people of other nations. Still, it is not always about "me" or "I" — although our media would lead you to believe that.

We are a very generous nation and people, as demonstrated by the disaster relief sent by individual Americans. The U.S. gives the most money to the United Nations, NATO and other world organizations. Our way of living as individuals and as a nation may be different, or even the antithesis of other nations, but it is not because we are bad people. It's just the product of the different way in which the nation was forged.

ron plunkett