Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Penalty for Possessing a Bible

Veith points out: "In the heyday of Soviet Communism, the penalty for possessing a Bible was 3 years in prison. Think of that the next time you dare to read that dangerous book."

That would be whether you read it, or believed it.

When I was in college I spent some time with a young man who had fled Russia. (This was before Gorbachev and glasnost.) He told me that he figured out there must be a God, and capitalism must work, because there were only two things the Communist Party teachers repeated over and over and over:

"There is no God."
"Capitalism is corrupt."

Everything else they pretty much said one time. So he logically concluded that they were afraid of God and Capitalism, and repeated these mantras out of legitimate fear.

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