Isn’t it a grand irony that an upbringing that ticks Maslow’s boxes, instills a sense of hope and teaches love, achieves all this in a system that rewards theft and enmity? Socialists knew the duplicity and other excesses of capitalists, so those were the traits they had to master.

Could our obedient, armed, deist neighbors ever be convinced that Mutually Assured Destruction can be transformed into Mutually Committed to Peace, if the faith they have in their sky god was displaced by a faith in themselves and their neighbors?