Letter to the editor: Democrats are not 'socialists'

Today’s “conservative Republicans” have done a masterful job of brainwashing and hoodwinking many Americans into believing that the national Democrats are now some kind of “socialists.”

We now have a No. 1 bestseller on the nonfiction list titled “American Marxism” (written by Mark Levin) with a picture of a hammer and sickle on the cover. This would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic. Because, with respect to their political and economic views, most of my fellow Democrats have views that are closer to those of Groucho Marx than Karl Marx.

Please read Paul Krugman’s Feb. 13, 2020, New York Times column “Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist,” which you can find online. Krugman, a professor of economics, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics, so it is safe to say that what he says about this is much more credible and believable than what a right-wing Fox News fanatic and extremist like Mark Levin says.

Stewart B. Epstein

Rochester, N.Y.

The writer is a former Squirrel Hill resident who taught at West Virginia and Slippery Rock universities.