The Greek left has blamed George Papadopoulos’ dictatorship for everything including the sinking of the Titanic. But your April 29 editorial“The Cost of Junta: 50 Years Later,” went beyond all that.

It blamed the dictatorship for the rise to power of Andreas Papandreou; seven whole years after the fall of the dictatorship and afterConstantine Karamanlis had won two elections and presided over the fastest growing economy in Europe.

By the way, when the leftists talk of the dictatorship they call it junta, which is a Spanish word and unknown to the Greeks. It sounds bad and since people don’t know what it means, they can add anything that suits them.

The Greek people, the founders of democracy, do not deserve dictatorships, but today it is undeniable that they were better off overall under it than under leftist governments.

The sad truth is that we Modern Greeks are uneducated about politics, economics,and the realities of life in general. Our institutions have failed us miserablyand as a consequence we have failed. It is not the dictatorship’s fault that a faulty system exists today whereby the prime minister of Greece has a majority in parliament with only 23% of the votes. That is an insane system. We have met the enemy and it is our lack of education aboutlife and livingness. It is time to confront that and turn over a new leaf.

Socialism and communism are failed ideologies, they don’t work. We need responsible democracy, not lies on top of more lies.The Polytechnic “uprising”for instance, that brought about the “resistance fighters” group (see all leftists),did not topple the dictatorship as is sold to the believers. It was used to oust Papadopoulos and open the door to the demise of Cyprus. The incident did not bring about the fall of the dictatorship. The invasion of Cyprus and loss of the 40% of the island did. The catastrophe in Cyprus was unfortunately aided by the Polytechnic incident.

No more lies, truth is what is missing from the Greek world today.

Dr. Alexander Alemis

PALOS HEIGHTS, IL

Dr. Alexander Alemis is the author of Political Systems and their Relationship to Economics and Freedom.