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For trying to bar people from being religious or trying to punish them for believing or participating in religion really is an amateur hour mistake once you think about it. I mean, for any social reformer, just because your personal trajectory has involved setting religion to one side, and perhaps even energetically declaring yourself an atheist, doesn't mean you need to pressure other people to do the same and/or insist they follow your timetable.

It would have been so much better to take the position, we're no longer going to let people be discriminated against on the basis of religion, and we're certainly not going to allow such discrimination to be an aspect of governmental policy.

I know there were anti-cleric movements in Latin America in the 1800s. And I think it's rumored that the Casa Rosada in Argentina was a compromise among factions, although I also understand there were varying stories as to why the building was created with beautiful pink architecture. So given the time, maybe it's a little more understandable of why communists made this mistake. But what if they hadn't.

What if early communists had advocated religious freedom?
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