Letter: U.S. will survive this election

Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2000 | 8:35 a.m.

The current election, with all the controversies involved, has been the source of encouragement and pride to me as an American citizen. I feel this way because of -- not in spite of -- the arguments, battles and controversy surrounding the issue of who is to be our newly elected president.

If this kind of dispute in an election were to occur in a place like Chile or Peru, or any number of other Latin-American, African or Middle-Eastern countries, I suspect that tanks would be in the streets and they would probably face some kind of civil war.

But here in the United States, we fuss and fume, we bluster and complain, and we agree or disagree whether the election should be decided this way or that way, but all is done peacefully and within the confines of a system that has invariably proved correct.

Whatever the outcome, whoever the president, half of us will be happy and the other half less happy, but the nation will go on.

LEE BERNSTEIN, M. D.

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