Regarding Gino Mariotti’s letter “FDR example forgotten” (June 26). There is no “gut wrenching incivility” in Rush Limbaugh’s show.

The writer blames Limbaugh and Fox News for the idea that socialism and communism are joined at the hip. Really? To quote Lenin: “the goal of socialism is communism.” I think Lenin, history, and the fact that socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, and destroys once vibrant successful countries like Cuba, Venezuela and more broadly, Russia, China and much of Europe, proves they are destructive, failed political systems linked at the hip, without any help.

The writer defends socialism as “protecting political and civil liberties ... under Democrat dominance.” Again, Lenin made clear how socialism does not protect civil liberties: “One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers communist (the government) and the disarming of the bourgeoisie (the middle class)” and “one guy with a gun can control 100 without one.”

Perhaps this explains why Democrats are so hell-bent on disarming law-abiding citizens and taking away our Second Amendment rights. It is the only way to achieve their utopian socialist goals.

I was born and raised in Petrolia, but I have spent the past 30 years living in Seattle, Wash., and traveling regularly to California. Our founders expected the states to be the test beds of the democratic republic, and so they are. Socialist Democratic policy failures are on full display in these two states, which are in California 100% Democrat run, and 98% in Washington. These states are racked with homelessness, drug addiction, corruption, crime and debt and have gone from nice, safe places to live, to sanctuary cities for criminals and inhospitable for business. The middle class is fleeing California at the rate of more than 100,000 per year net loss, to better-run and managed states, mostly Florida and Texas. This is a fact, not my political view or feeling.

The writer rails on about Bush and Trump’s spending, yet fails to point out that it was Obama’s “shovel ready” stimulus and his eight years of record high unemployment, food stamps, regulations and worst economic recovery in history that more than doubled the U.S. debt from $9 trillion to more than $18 trillion. Can’t blame Bush, Trump or Republicans for those facts.

Trump’s economy has the lowest unemployment for African Americans, Hispanics. Women and the general population in decades. Wages are increasing, 64-plus record stock market increases are swelling 401K’s and retirement plans, and for the first time in history there are millions more jobs available than there are Americans to fill them.

The writer speaks of how so few could motivate so many into abandoning “those valued American principles” that guided America through the 20th century. I assure you that those valued American principles do NOT include socialism, high taxes and globalist, anti-American thinking. As proof, a new poll from Quinnipiac was just released that names Obama as the Worst President Since World War II.

Americans, in overwhelming numbers (2,626 counties for Trump versus 487 for Clinton), rejected Democrat socialist policies in 2016 for more business friendly, America friendly policies. In 2020, I predict even more Americans will do so again.

Vance Kemege Seattle, formerly of Petrolia