To the editor:

To Josiah Legler, I quote Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary definition of anarchy. “1. A state or society without government or law; 2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control; 3. a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as an ideal and that purposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society; 4. Confusion.”

Webster goes on to define an anarchist as “a person who seeks to overturn by violence all constituted forms and institutions of society and government, with no purpose of establishing any other system of order in the place of that destroyed.”

Mr. Legler’s description of a society that seeks equality, freedom and cooperation sounds a lot like democracy. The nation that comes closest to that, certainly not perfect, but always seeking these ideals is, (hint: remember the Constitution and Martin Luther King). You guessed it: The United States of America!

Tom Bates,

Lawrence