God and Democracy

Why all the fuss about Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori’s remark that Japan is “a divine nation with the emperor at its center” (May 27)? Have we forgotten “one nation under God” (U.S. Pledge of Allegiance) and President Thomas Jefferson’s statement, “The sacred rights of mankind . . . are written by the hand of divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power”? Are divinity and democracy incompatible?

CHARLES F. DAY

Laguna Niguel