Sir, - The "greening of America" is an old cliche to describe Irish influence in the White House and on Capitol Hill. It's about politics and politicians - too often American politicians and pork barrel politics. The connections with this country are sometimes obscure.
The Americanisation of Ireland is something else. It doesn't begin with politics, though that's where it ends. The big argument is about the relationship between society and the economy and which comes first.
In the United States there's no doubt: it's the economy first and last. And that means that social issues, the public interest and the good of the community take second place to the power and influence of finance. In other words, profit.
No one can - or should - object to companies profiting from their efforts and enterprise, though some would like to suggest that that's how the trade union movement and its members look at life. This is self-serving nonsense designed to distort the issue.
What we object to is a lopsided system in which everything is given a cash value and nothing else counts. This is the Americanisation that we are being asked to accept, to adopt and to welcome as essential to the modernisationof Ireland.
We are certainly not being asked to look at the other America, the alternative to the macho version where winners take all and no gives a damn what happens to the rest.
We are being asked to ignore the millions who are members of AFL-CIO labour unions; the millions more who, like Senator George Mitchell, favour healthcare programmes and the groups dedicated to the rights of ethnic minorities.
What we are being told we must accept - as if there was no choice - is the ugly Americanisation favoured by Charlie McCreevy, Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney.
The ugly American of the 21st century is the world's policeman who chooses to act when, and only when, US commercial and political interests are at stake.
The ugly American is the master of global control, who uses the muscle of corporations which resist regulation in any shape or form and refuse to recognise the rights of their employees to be represented by Trade Unions.
The ugly American spouts about the free market, as if freedom and the market were synonymous and cartels did not exist. The ugly American attacks state intervention, for whatever reason and with whatever effect, but regards private monopolies as an unmixed blessing.
The ugly American stirs up ethnic rivalry at home and abroad to set workers at each other's throats. We are beginning to feel the effects of racial tension and ethnic rivalry here. There is still time to prevent the worst excesses of the melting pot, but only if we persuade the Irish people that there is another way. - Yours, etc.,
Jack Nash, Regional Secretary, SIPTU, Liberty Hall, Dublin 1.