Sir, - As an American opponent of the death penalty, I welcome the protests in Europe and around the world against the barbaric execution of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas. Irish opinion leaders were particularly vocal. This grisly execution was only the latest expression of the moral coarsening of American life in the last decades. Sadly, the Tucker case drew more than average US media attention because elements of the far right came to her defence in her last days. If she had been an African-American man, or simply a poor white without far-right champions, her case would likely have attracted little US attention. That's how bad it is here.
My country presumes to preach to the world about human rights. Mainstream - that is, corporate-dominated, right-wing media - will barely cover the European anti-death penalty protests. The US public is ignorant of how much of civilised international opinion views it: a dog-eat-dog society that produces economic squalor for millions of its own residents, not to mention its overseas economic victims. It produces a corresponding moral squalor, one of whose most outrageous expressions is public execution.
It is a shameful moment for me. Yet, America has powerful democratic traditions too, even if they are not much in evidence. Loud protests by Irish people and others against this barbaric practice can help progressive forces here hasten its end. Yours, etc., Joseph Jamison,
Bayside,
New York.