To be kind, John Balentne’s put-down of Bernie Sanders (“Who wants to be a millionaire under Sanders?,” Feb. 26) reflects neither disingenuousness, stupidity nor historical ignorance. He merely ignores the “democratic” in “democratic socialist,” which allows making Bernie a communist.

Any cosmopolitan experience, such as millions of American travelers and servicemen have of Europe annually, contradicts his entire screed.  Democratic socialist governments do not murder or imprison individuals, much less millions, save for serious crimes. Their citizens do not starve. Nor does the state, with rare exception, “own the means of production.” They do, by democratic choice, have health care for all, and have or have had free college education, as have U.S. GIs who use government checks at low-tuition colleges and trade schools.

Nor is Bernie’s New Deal socialism destined to “kill off the coal and oil industries.” Oil and uneconomical coal are necessarily forfeit to saving the planet as a human habitat. Balentine’s blindness reaches absurdity in foreseeing lack of incentive if we returned to Roosevelt/Truman/Eisenhower taxation of inordinate wealth.  Henry Ford’s incentive was never stinted.  And, by the tens of thousands, European inventors and entrepreneurs in social democracies achieve wealth beyond their ability to spend.  I’ve not heard of their citizens denied freedom “to do or think or live as they want.” Has he not heard of the LePens?

Has he inquired as to how Bernie, who lives modestly, expends his wealth without giving any away?

John’s blindness is the quintessential latter-day American conservative’s: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” means limitless consumption and self-aggrandizement and minimum contribution to the common good through government, which, in the U.S. of A. is constitutionally bound “to promote the general welfare,” as Bernie Sanders would have it do and it can only do by taxing excess and ending waste in needless arms and wars.

William H. Slavick
Portland