Socialism as Religion

Be careful who you give awards to...the Reverend Jim Jones, 1977's Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian award winner

Born May 13 (1931), the Reverend Jim Jones is famous for his deep Christian-Socialist beliefs, his humanitarian impulses, his Peoples’ Temple in San Francisco where he organised leftist demonstrations, and of course, the workers’ paradise he established at Jonestown in Guyana.  His passionate commitment to equality and fairness drew inspiration from thinkers such as Jesus, Buddha, Lenin, Marx, Castro and Mao, and won him kudos from the likes of well-known lib-labs Walter Mondale, Rosalynn Carter, Jerry Brown, and Harvey Milk (who called the Reverend “a man of the highest character.”)

In any case, the socialist paradise shuddered to a halt in 1978. That’s when the reverend bade his goons shoot-up a congressional investigation team, and then he fed poisoned Kool-aid to his faithful throng. Almost a thousand people shook hands with god that day. For over a year his flock had camped-out in a fevered jungle, mucking about the spartan huts they built; they sated their leader’s goatish and omnivorous lusts; they suffered a proscription against leaving; and they worshipped at the altar of pure communist theory.  Then they drank purple soft drink, laced with cyanide. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”