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Daily Round-up: Kool-Aid Socialists, OWS Mocks Itself, Foreign Films & The Antiwar Mindset

Daniel J. Flynn reviews A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown. He says Julia Scheeres’s work, which examines the events leading to the mass death in the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, is fairly solid on a factual basis, but takes the wrong lessons from the incident. The cult was born […]

Daniel J. Flynn reviews A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown. He says Julia Scheeres’s work, which examines the events leading to the mass death in the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, is fairly solid on a factual basis, but takes the wrong lessons from the incident. The cult was born of the idea that socialism was an enlightening experience that could replace the “opiate” of religion.

Such delusions cost more than 900 people their lives in South America. It merely costs the author a more complete understanding of her subjects. She marvels at the paradox of noble ideas unleashing ignoble deeds. But in the aftermath of the Lenin/Stalin/Hitler/Mao-century, socialism manifesting as horror show isn’t ironic. It’s clichéd.

Occupy Wall Street crowds seem to be losing favor with the general populace, including those on the left who may have once been sympathetic to the movement. Now Jon Stewart is poking a little fun at their hypocrisy. Rod Dreher says they’ve become a parody of themselves.

Daniel Larison explains why the U.S. seems to “stick up for the little guy”—backing “tiny, vulnerable nations” over their powerful neighbors. It’s about power projection, not protecting the weak.

Tom Engelhardt recalls his cinema-inspired youth, and explains how his view of the world and of war was shaped by the foreign films of those celluloid-laden days.

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