When defending religion, people sometimes argue that even if it doesn't make any logical sense, it inspires people to behave better. If you point out its flaws, you're just undermining society's ethical sense.
It seems a rather patronising proposition, to leave the lower orders to their delusions in the hope that it might deter them from walking on the flower beds, but still, let's analyse it through one of my favourite techniques, the secular analogy.
Have you ever met any members of the British Communist Party? Not the Trotskyists or suchlike, the old-style communists who disintegrated into a welter of competing factions in the seventies and eighties.
Lovely people. Honestly, you'd be amazed. Generally imbued with optimism, humanity and an interest in Celtic folk music, they're the real good Samaritans of the modern world. Which is why it's so hard to understand their enthusiasm for the Soviet system, so famously the exact opposite of all that. It's a good thing the Russians never invaded, they'd have been so disappointed.
But if life turns against you, and you find yourself lying at the side of the road in need of a good Samaritan, then you couldn't do much better than a British Communist. Emergency services will be alerted, provisions will be shared, your possessions will be entirely safe. They may sing a bit, but otherwise they're perfectly sweet.
You see the analogy, I'm sure. Two questions. Firstly, have you attributed any part of their goodness to Stalin? Secondly, are you motivated to encourage the survival of Marxism-Leninism in the world?
Another similarity between communists and the religious. The farther they are from power, the nicer they are.
