Madam, - I feel privileged to have witnessed such an historic event in the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America. Not only has he broken down barriers of race but he has built up bridges of hope in America and beyond. - hope that has inspired young voters to realise that their vote matters, that every vote matters.
Perhaps the greatest hope of all, for the future of the political landscape, can be found in Mr Obama's guarded speech in Chicago on Tuesday night when he chose to focus on the seriousness of the task that lay ahead rather than dwelling on what he had just achieved.
Although I was only young when George W. Bush came to office in 2000 I had grown up with a very cautious view of America and what it meant to the world. Today, however, I feel a sense of unity with a country with which I have no connection. That unity springs from the emotions I saw on the faces of people from all walks of life who shared a common goal and worked together to achieve it.
America has regained its status as the world's greatest nation and its inspirational people are the ones to thank. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - The temptation to join in the widespread euphoria that has greeted the election of Barack Obama is outweighed for me by the foreboding that it is all downhill from here - for him personally, for the US and for the world.
Obama has promised change but has not specified the nature of that change. The only kind of change that could pull the US and the world out of the accelerating descent into economic, environmental and political ruin is some kind of substantial structural change. But Obama has no electoral mandate for such a change and any attempt by him to introduce it as president would be stopped one way or another.
"Pity the nation that needs heroes." Pity also the hero who has raised expectations which, given their scale and conflicting nature, cannot be realised. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - John McCain's speech at the Biltmore Hotel in Arizona on Tuesday night was extremely gracious and warm-spirited. He should be very proud, despite having lost to the better man.
Had he been free of Sarah Palin, Bush-era advisers and those damn robo-calls, he might have had a better chance.
Here's to the peaceful years ahead he so elequently invoked. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - Because of his Irish lineage, we proudly called John F Kennedy an Irish-American, certainly never a European- American.
Recognising that Africa, like Europe, is a collection of established independent states, should we not now rightly call Barack Obama, who has a more direct non-American lineal ancestor than Kennedy, a Kenyan-American, rather than using the over-general term African-American? - Yours, etc,
Madam, - Sarah Carew (November 6th) asks: "Is there really a difference between the white people who refused to vote for [Obama] because of his skin colour and the African-American voters who voted for him only because of his skin colour?"
Yes, of course there is. The former is entirely negative, and unambiguously racist. The latter is entirely positive, voting for someone who, perhaps for the first time, represents African- American dreams, aspirations and hope of being engaged in the running of their country. I suspect few African-Americans truly voted for Obama "only because of his skin colour". To suggest so belittles an extraordinary political achievement.
I hope the man can run the country even half as well as he ran his campaign. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - The world's a funny place. Those unelected figures who walked in the shadows of George Bush Snr and Jnr are still alive and well and still very powerful. The war in Iraq is still costing $10 billion dollars a month. Servicemen are still being killed in remote Afghan mountains, and the Wall Street fat cats are still being bailed out by the US taxpayer.
The American election result is intriguing for these, and other, reasons. If the promise of better morality in government is to have a start, Barack Obama is the one you'd wish to make it. Whether morality of governance arrives tomorrow, or in a hundred years, tribunals in this country and similar audits in others have made it clear that the will of the people supports such morality. And while the euphoria of this election result is wonderful to experience, goodness knows there's a lot wrong with the world that will take more than President Barack Obama to fix. We as citizens have our role to play. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - Many commentators agree that Barack Obama's electoral success stemmed from his record-breaking fundraising based on small donations and his focus on local outreach: "The ground game".
Both of these efforts could best be understood as national applications of what he learned as a community organiser.
It is comforting that, after the Republican party's scoffing at the job of community organiser and the concept of community itself, this was the bedrock of Obama's victory and the Republican Party's demise.
Community was more powerful than individualism. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - Like many people around the world, I welcome the regime change the citizens of the US have instigated with the election of Barack Obama.
I hope this will lead eventually to a calmer and more balanced view of global affairs which will serve the interests of more than a small political elite in the US.
I cannot wait to participate in a bit of regime-changing at home in the not too distant future. - Yours, etc,