I liked this, from a reader:

A bit more about us Indians hating Friedman’s argument. I live in Alexandria, VA, surrounded by some great decent people who have lived all over the world, are educated and are avowed liberals. A lot of them moan America’s propensity to pushback against any attempt to move policy to the left – universal health care, tighter regulation of industry, punitive meausres against corporations etc. As an Indian my answer is always the same. We in India tried for 45 years what you want to try in America. When I was 14, studying in a respectable high school in India, my father wanted me to study hard so that I could get a Government job. Top income tax rates were in the 90% range. Everyone who was rich was either born that way or had perfected the fine art of bending rules and greasing palms.
Then Dr. Manmohan Singh opened up the economy in 1991 and India’s entrepreneurial spirits were liberated. By the time I passed out of Engineering college, I had multiple employers courting me. My first salary out of school was three times what my father made after 25 years of service. Today, 12 years later, the salaries have more than quintupled. India’s tax rates are now actually less than those in the US. If you make Rs. 10 lakhs a year(a very upper middle class income), you pay only 10% in federal income taxes. The results are there for everyone to see. And that’s the reason why outside the US, there is no other place where America is as popular as it is in India. In fact considering how much so many liberals dislike the essence of America, I would say, America is more popular in India than it is in America.