Sep 23, 2014 2 min read

Socialism is a taboo subject, but in the Observer-Reporter Aug. 24, a 77-year-old neighbor of Johnny Cash said the government house the singer grew up in during the 1930s was socialism and wouldn’t happen today.

While it is true families don’t get a mule, water pump and outhouse any more, public housing still exists, as do homeless Americans. Although under vicious attack, socialism is well established here and throughout the world, particularly Latin America, where Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Costa Rica have leftist presidents, despite the best efforts of the CIA.

Steven Kinzer’s commentary on the CIA’s latest attempt to destabilize Cuba, also in the August 24th Observer-Reporter, makes no mention of the taboo subject, socialism. Instead, Kinzer equates Cuba with Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Libya under Moammar Gadafi. America’s promotion of democracy abroad, often military campaigns, “has had the opposite of its desired effect,” Kinzer chides. He says the best way to promote democracy is “to give the people stability, safety, and decent lives” in his endorsement of dictator-run governments.

An example of socialism with American characteristics is that between 1971 and 2000, the U.S.-funded physicists in Los Alamos, N.M., who used hydraulic fracturing to successfully tap the virtually limitless thermal energy beneath the earth’s crust. A for-profit company in Oregon is doing it now, but there are problems.

A pilot project on a seismic fault line in Basel, Switzerland, was canceled when it triggered earthquakes (predicted by my engineer uncle, Jesse, in 1970) and fracking fluid is nasty, but treatable. Relieving seismic pressure may reduce large quakes. Less hypothetical are fossil fuel and nuclear energy catastrophes.

Jim Greenwood

Washington, PA 15301