To the Editor:
In “Respect Your Children,” your Sept. 5 editorial defending President Obama from overheated right-wing charges of indoctrinating children with socialism, you refer to “socialism and its evil history,” and go on to say that in socialist countries people can be “compelled” to listen to their leaders.
You seem to be conflating socialism and Communism. Few fair-minded observers would ascribe “evil” or dictatorial attributes to socialism as practiced in, for example, the postwar democracies of Britain and Sweden.
Margaret Peters Schwed
New York, Sept. 5, 2009
Note from KBJ: If socialism is benign, why doesn't President Obama describe himself as a socialist? By the way, how many Americans are emigrating to Britain and Sweden?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 