Socialist bogeyman

I hope all readers of Bradley Gitz’s Monday column last week had also read Paul Krugman’s column two days earlier. Whereas Krugman was thoughtful and cogent, Gitz was neither. In fact, Gitz did exactly what Krugman said Republicans have been doing for six decades, branding anyone or any idea anywhere left of center as “offering up” socialism.

Gitz claimed the current Democratic Party was lurching “toward Marx’s collectivist utopia” and that the Democrats would nominate an “unabashed Trotskyite” for president in 2020. Gitz called Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris “kooks.” He also called Medicare for all a “thoroughly nutty” idea.

I agree with Krugman that “scaremongering over socialism is both silly and dishonest.”

I would guess that anyone professing political science well understands the difference between socialism and social democracies, but Gitz habitually ignores those differences and lumps the two together. Those prominent Democrats espousing those “nutty” ideas want, at most, the United States to move closer to the kinds of social democracies manifest in Nordic countries such as Denmark and Sweden.

Those countries are not Venezuela, and they are not bad places to live. EARL RAMSEY

Little Rock