Not that either of the world's largest democracies take kindly to being criticised. Timothy Noah reviewed current poster boy Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom (see posts for April 21 and 27) positively, on the whole, except for this minor quibble: "More disappointing is Zakaria's decision to end his book with a condemnation of democratic excesses in the United States and the West. His arguments in these late chapters are pedestrian at best (do we really need to hear again that presidential primaries robbed political parties of their power?) and annoyingly mandarin at worst (he comes close to calling for a revival of the WASP aristocracy). They are also beside the point. Only a few of the problems he describes even exist, and those that do bear little comparison to the problems faced by unfree societies." The Babu thinks he can hear the strains of God Bless America playing somewhere in the background.