Letter to the editor: 'Socialist' labels on Democrats a dishonest strategy

It’s a good time for the Democrats to expose what Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics, refers to as the “dishonest political strategy” used by conservative Republicans: calling most (if not all) congressional Democrats names like “socialists,” “Marxists,” “communists,” “far leftists” and “radical leftists.”

I do not believe any of them are true socialists. They are “social Democrats” just as most of our allies are in Canada, Australia, western Europe and Scandinavia. What Democrats really want is simply to make our country more like our allies in that their federal governments do more and spend more than ours does (in proportion to population size) on social programs in order to help their lower and middle classes be able to pay their bills and receive good-quality health care and a decent overall quality of life.

I know that some Americans actually believe that the Democrats want to abolish our market-based capitalist economic system. I want to assure them that none of them want to do this. Democrats know that a truly socialist economy has never worked or been successful in any large-scale society.

Don’t fall for this right-wing propaganda. If the truth were to be told and revealed, I believe that about 95% of conservative Republicans know that the Democrats are not really socialists.

They just want to scare the American people, and that is why they keep telling this lie.

Stewart Epstein

Rochester, N.Y.

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