It takes a Marxist to know how to show one up

In chapter eighteen of his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (based on his own enthusiasms during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39) Ernest Hemingway admits that Communism is actually religious in nature;

...you felt you were taking part in a crusade....something like the feeling you expected to have and did not have when you made your first communion. It was a feeling of consecration to a duty toward all of the oppressed of the world....

As authentic as the feeling one gets standing in Chartres Cathedral with the sunlight streaming in through the stained glass, he says.

Funny, but we can't help but think of that metaphor when we listen to Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant--Phd, North Carolina State--speak of her enthusiasms. Just last week, as it happens.

The inside baseball: there is a state law in Washington that prohibits its cities from imposing rent control. Council members Licata and Sawant want that law repealed. Real estate developer Roger Valdez thinks it amusing that he can quote Karl Marx while Kshama relies on 'God and voodoo'.

Valdez and his ally, state representative Manweller, continually remind the audience that economic reality isn't optional. That the two councilmen don't have any magic Rent Control Fairy Dust to sprinkle over Seattle to repeal the Laws of Supply and Demand. What has happened in cities with rent control--including New York and San Francisco--will happen in Seattle if Kshama and Nick were to get their way.

The poor will be hurt, apartments will become scarcer...and pricier. It's economics. Not faith.