I happen to agree with The New York Times when they warn Nancy Pelosi not to give too much power to the newly-elected House Democrats who call themselves “Democratic socialists.” They will be a minority of the Democrats in the House of Representatives.

I don’t enjoy being unkind and insulting toward anyone, even the Republicans in the Congress, a minority of whom are really scary “survival-of-the-fittest” social Darwinists, but, to me, I believe you have to be a total and complete moron and idiot to call yourself a “Democratic socialist,” and that includes Bernie Sanders, who I like and agree with 90 percent of the time.

First of all, they are not true socialists.

Second of all, if you believe that anyone can be elected president of the United States who calls herself/himself a socialist, then you must live in dreamland and must have swallowed the Kool-Aid.

Third of all, they are all liberals/progressives who support our capitalist economic system but who believe in a federal government that has effective safety-net and social programs, which help to make life better for its citizens, and, by the way, who want our federal government to do more to help its citizens as almost all of our allies do proportionate to its population size compared with ours. They often criticize our country for that reason. Believe me, I had to listen to it every day for the five years I lived in Canada.

Stewart B. Epstein

Rochester, New York