Reading Lee W. Price's letter "Hypocritical liberals" (Collegian, Feb. 21), I was surprised to discover that American "liberals" have been supporters of communism and are being shown how wrong they were by events in Central and Eastern Europe, which are proving that "people of the world want and desire American democracy."

Price never defines what he means by "liberals," but we may assume that he is referring to that portion of the Democratic party that grew up in the late 1960s around opposition to the Vietnam War.

Previous to that, presidents such as Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, regarded in their day as liberal Democrats, were responsible for the Korean and Vietnam wars against communism, and the Truman Doctrine which first proclaimed the worldwide struggle against communism.

In general, they advocated and implemented policies much more consistently anti-Communist than those of conservative Richard Nixon favoring detente with the Soviet Union and a thawing of relations with the People's Republic of China.

But have today's liberal Democrats, the "peaceniks" who opposed the Vietnam War, really been pro-Communist? One of them, Susan Sontag, has called communism "fascism with a human face."

American democratic socialists such as Irving Howe and the late Michael Harrington, well to the left of most "liberal Democrats," have always been among the most vehement critics of communism.

While there was an unfortunate flirtation with Maoism and other brands of Marxism by the student left in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the mainstream of American "liberals" has never at any time since World War II shown any sympathy for communism (though they have often questioned the need to build up such an extensive nuclear arsenal to defend this country against it).

As for the claim that the people of Central and Eastern Europe want "American democracy:" this is pure ignorance.

Ten years ago, Vaclav Havel, now president of Czechoslovakia, wrote to his wife from a prison the Communists had put him in that if he were a West German he would vote for the radical environmentalist Green party and protest the stationing of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. Recently he proposed to President Bush that the Americans as well as the Soviets withdraw all their troops and weapons.

Polish dissidents such as Adam Michnik, Leszek Kolakowski and Czeslaw Milosz have described themselves as socialists, albeit democratic ones. Mr. Price should learn the meaning of the roughly equivalent terms "social democracy" and "democratic socialism," which describe an ideology much more popular in Europe than capitalism.

According to the Feb. 20 New York Times, a survey made by a French public opinion company showed that more West Germans, Spaniards, Italians, French, Hungarians and Soviets react negatively than positively to the word "capitalism," whereas in all those countries attitudes towards the terms "democratic socialism" and "social democracy" are more positive than negative. In the Soviet Union, only 4 percent of respondents said they favored capitalism.

Unfortunately, it is probable that no amount of evidence will ever convince conservatives like Mr. Price that they are "on the wrong side of the coin."