Jonathan Freedland ("No Americans, please, we're British", 19 April) should not have been surprised by his failure to end left-wing prejudice against America.

The US constitution springs from a Lockean distrust of government - hence its stress upon assorted checks and balances. That distrust springs from an indifference towards social and economic inequality which, in the US, has been seen as a tolerable side-effect of "liberty" and laissez-faire. The British left, by contrast, has always seen the battle against inequality as paramount, and has consequently taken a more approving view of state intervention.

Freedland should also be wary of Thomas Paine, whose radicalism had a libertarian, rather than egalitarian, bias. He once wrote that, "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state it is an intolerable one". Like the US, Paine was closer to the British new right than to the progressive left.

Richard Kelly
The Manchester Grammar School

Jonathan Freedland's remarks on the anti-American left are easily made. But consider Noam Chomsky, the main critic of US foreign and economic policy.

Chomsky looks at government policy to see how far it enshrines principles of classical liberalism deep rooted in the US. He finds many policies wanting. This does not make him anti-American - it makes him a supporter of all those Americans whose values have not been reflected in the policies he analyses. "Speak truth to the powerless - or better, with the powerless," as Chomsky has remarked.

Adrian Kozlowski
Birmingham