Dear editor,

When reading the paper Tuesday, it dawned on me how ignorance and lacking research do not go well together.

A fine example of this is Mr. Steve Flowers’ column. He writes about the national debt: “Barack Obama has never really cared about the national crisis. This socialist Democratic philosophy has been the downfall of several European and third world countries as well as early Rome.”

First of all, Mr. Flowers, what downfall? Perhaps he refers to the failed states of Norway, Denmark and Sweden, which are some of the most outspoken socialist countries in Europe.

He is quite right that they have experienced a downfall, just not in the way you might think.

They do for instance only have a government debt of respectively 34 percent, 48 percent and 42 percent of their GDP while the U.S. has 103 percent. In addition, the GDP per capita in Norway is $10,000 more than in the U.S.

Another element in Mr. Flowers’ column that needs addressing is the “early Rome” part. Socialism itself as a political philosophy was not invented at the time of the early Rome.

The Roman way of life was not the slightest socialist because it was a hierarchically society — with, for instance, slavery.

All this can be summed up to one piece of advice for Mr. Flowers: buy a history book and get your facts right!

Rasmus Borngräber Olsen

Selma