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THOMAS S.(AS.(

The freedomabusersS INCE THE DEA TH OFthe Reverend Jim Jones, thediagnosis of paranoia has beenfalling on his memory like snowflakesin a winter storm in Syracuse. I suggest that we take another look at someof the facts reported about this Marxist-Christian minister before the sordid truths about his behavior andthat of his followers are completelyburied beneath a blanket of psychiatricspeculations and diagnoses.Virtually everyone who knew Jones-among them some prominent andpresumably perceptive and intelligentmen and women-regarded him asperfectly healthy mentally. For instance, during the 1976 Carter presidential campaign, Rosalynn Carterand Jim Jones dined together in SanFrancisco. Mrs. Carter, who is, as weknow, one of America's foremost experts on mental health, found no signof menta l illness in Jones-on the contrary: In March 1977, she wrote hima letter praising his proposal to givemedical aid to Cuba, and after theelection she invited him to attend theinauguration, which he did.

That Jones was accepted as at least"normal" in California liberal political circles has by now become notorious. That he was still widely regardedas both mentally healthy and morallyadmirable during the weeks and daysimmediately preceding the massacreis evident from the fact that a gala,$25-a-plate dinner benefit for the Peoples Temple was planned in San Francisco for December 2, 1978. Called "AStruggle Against Oppression," the affair was io feature Dick Gregory andTHOMAS SZASZ, a contributing editor, writesa monthly column for lNQUIRr. His most recentbook is The Myth of Psychotherapy.

the Temple's two lawyers, Mark Laneand Charles Garry, as speakers. I t wasendorsed by 75 prominent city leadersand politicians. I t was cancelled afterthe massacre.Actually, in view of Jones's impressive record of good "psychotherapeutic" works, the enthusiasm of evangelistic mental healthers for him shouldcome as no surprise. Jones "cured drug

addicts." He "rehabilitated" aimlAmericans and put them on the roto a communitarian salvation. He wofficially at least, even against suic-when it was a course chosen on oown. On Memorial Day in 1977 (o18 months before the Jonestown msacre), Jones led a delegation of Pples Temple members on a march othe Golden Gate Bridge in San Frcisco, demanding that the city builsuicide barrier on the bridge.In addition to these testimonialJones's good mental health and comendable character, we also haveword of Jones's personal physicthat the minister was both psychrically normal and morally admira

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Carlton Goodlett, identified as ablack doctor" in Sa nhad also attended Jones

uyana, told the New York Times:was convinced that Jones was inin

that actually pu t people inshape down there than they hadin San Francisco." Even after the

Dr. Goodlett offered thisopinion-not about Jones,

about his disenchanted followers:deserters from the church hadto me, bu t they were just a

o say that Jim Jones was widelyis inan understat ement: He was reas a brilliant healer of minds,

"therapist.'' Many of his foldrug users. Tw o

the massacre. One of them,Carter, told the Times he had beenand was cured by Jones. Tim's

Carter (both of whose"on drugs"), praised Jones'sabuse to a Times rejoining the temple "they

up drugs, became rehabilitated,got better." Odell Rhodes, ansurvivor, "had been a heroin adthe Detroit ghetto. [W]ithhelp of Jim Jones's power he hadheroin, he said. He felt he needed

mentor to keep him straight."FTER THE BUTCHERrin Guyana, Jones's followersand friends were eager to dis

him as "paranoid." Steven Jonesno time diagnosing his father as

an opinion he kept carefully"dad" was dead. Wh ySteven Jones think his father washe destroyed the con

camp that young Jones evi"H e has de

I've worked for/'e of Jones 's lawyers, Charles

characterized the commune asbeautiful jewel. There is no racism,sexism, no ageism, no elitism, [sic]After the massacre, Garry"I am convinced this guymad." I f Garry be

ted his professional responsibilas a lawyer and his moral responsihuman being; and if heed it only becauseJones finally

out his oft-repeated threat ofmurder and suicide, then Garry

platitude in declaring his

safely-deceased client "mad."Mark Lane, Jones's other lawyer

and a renowned expert on conspiracyand paranoia, described his formerclient to the Times as "a paranoid murderer who, af ter four weeks of drug injections, gave the orders that resultedlast weekend in the deaths of Representative LeoJ. Ryan. . . . The greatconspiracy-hunter thus sought to exonerate Jones by attributing the massmurder and suicide no t only to "paranoia" bu t also to "drugs." But the factis that Lane accepted Jones as a clientand continued to represent him, up tothe very moment of the debacle.I cite all this as presumptive evidence that, before the final moment,those closest to Jones did not believethat he was psychotic. Their subsequent conclusion that Jones was paranoid is intellectually empty and patently self-serving. (Today everyonewho reads newspapers and watchestelevision has been taught that massmurderers are mad.) While Jones wasalive his friends and followers did notregard him as paranoid, quite simplybecause they liked what he was doing.For the bottom line is a moral judgment: Jones's supporters think that hewas a good man who suddenly becamemad; I think he was an evil man-andnotjust on the day of the massacre.

Whether or not Jones had been"crazy" long before the massacre, depends on the meaning one wishes toattach to that word. However, it is nowclear that for a long time Jones's behavior had been sordid and evil. I t isalso clear that when his followers werefaced with certain facts, they deliberately looked the other way. Considerthe following reports of Jones 's behavior during the period when his followers and those "outside" regardedJones as not merely "normal" but"superior":- Jones insisted that everyone call him"dad" or "father.'' When there was adisagreement in the commune, themembers would tranquilize one another and themselves by repeating theincantation, "Dad knows best. Just doas dad tells you."- Jones had a wife, several mistresses,and "had sex" with many of thewomen and several of the men in thecommune. "He told their husbands[according to Ti m Carter, an aide]that he only did it to help the woman."- Jones claimed that he was Jesus andcould cure cancer.-According to Jerry Parks, anothercult member, "Everyone had to admit

that they were homosexual, even thewomen. He was the only heterosexual."-Several times before the final butchery, Jones conducted rehearsals of thecommunal carnage.-Members of the commune had toturn their possessions over to Jones,had to work like slaves, were starvedand were kept from sleeping, and couldnot leave the commune.

D ESPITE THESE UNSA-vory facts (and many othersnot catalogued here), I canno t recall, in the thousands of wordsI read about the Jonestown affair, asingle commentator-journalist, politician, psychiatrist, anyone-characterizing the Reverend Jim Jones as anevil man. Mad, insane, crazy, paranoid, and variations on that themethat is the consensus. James Reston'sjudgment of Jones was sadly typical.After quoting the opinion of "one ofthe most prominent members of theCarter Administration,'' according towhom the Jonestown massacre was asymptom of "mass lunacy in an age ofemptiness," Reston delivered the craven diagnosis that liberal intellectuals,when faced with evil, instinctivelyissue. Th e Reverend Jones, declaredReston, was an "obviously dementedman."

The most imaginative diagnosis wasoffered, not surprisingly, by a psychiatrist. Explained Dr. Thomas Ungerleider, professor of psychiatry at theUniversity of California at Los Angeles: "I believe it was the jungle. Themembers got no feedback from the outside world. They did not read Timemagazine or watch the news atnight.... Dr. Alvin Poussaint, professor of psychiatry at Harvard andone of the leading black psychiatristsin America, offered this shameful andrevealing diagnosis: "We cannot ingood conscience fault the mission ofthe rank-and-file because of the acutepsychosis of their leader.... The humanitarian exper iment itself was not afailure, the Reverend Jones was.''I think we can do better than that.The evidence-despite Reston and theanonymous high Carter administration official-suggests that Jones wasdepraved, not "demented," and thatwhat his congregation displayed wasmass cruelty and cowardliness, no t"mass lunacy." I believe that plainEnglish words such as "evil," "depraved,'' "cruel,'' and "cowardly"furnish a better description of what

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happened at Jonestown than does thelexicon of lunacy in which those despicable and pathetic deeds have beencouched.This instant metamorphosis ofJonesfrom prophet to psychotic now con

ceals-as did previously the deliberatedenial of the significance of his everyday behavior by those who knew him- the self-evident evil that animatedthis bestial tyrant long before his supposed "degeneration into paranoia."That is the phrase used by Time magazine, where Jones is described as an"Indiana-born humanitarian who degenerated into egomania and paranoia." Newsweek confirms the diagnosis: Jones's "mind,'' we are informed, "deteriorated into paranoia."I object. It is fundamentally falseand distorting to view every gesture tohelp the poor-regardless of motives,methods, and consequences-as "humanitarian." .What tyrant has notclaimed to be motivated by a desireto help the helpless? We know only toowell that to those hungry for power,the prospect of "helping" life's victimspresents a great temptation; one thatcomplements the temptation that theprospect of oblivion through alcoholor drugs presents to those hungry for asimple solution to life's problems. Thatis why these two types of persons aredrawn to each other so powerfully,and why each regards the competent,self-reliant person as his enemy. Somuch for Jones's "humanitarianism."A S FOR JONES'S "PARA-noia," we accept the proverbialwisdom that one man's meat isanother man's poison. Similarly, weshould accept that one man's prophetis another man's paranoid. It is simply not true that Jones "degeneratedinto paranoia." Jones was the sameperson on November 18, 1978 (thedate of the mass murder and suicide),that he was the day before, the monthbefore, the year before. Jones did notsuddenly change. What did changesuddenly was the opinion certain people entertained and expressed abouthim.

What we need, then, is not so muchan explanation of what happened inJonestown, which is clear enough, butrather an explanation of the explanations of the carnage that the purveyorsof conventional wisdom have offeredus. Briefly put, such a metaexplanationmight state that paranoia in a deadand dishonored "cult" leader is causedby the sudden realizat ion of his follow-

ers and others that they have beenduped, which instantly transformsthem from sycophants (and sympathizers) into psychodiagnosticians.

Much could be, and should be, madeof the carnage at Jonestown. What Iwant to make out of it here is, briefly,this: Access to drugs entails what isnow smugly called "drug abuse."How, indeed, could it be otherwise?Why, then, the shocked surprise thataccess to freedom entails "freedomabuse"? Assuredly the abuse of freedom-like the abuse of alcohol, drugs,food, or any other good that nature orhuman ingenuity provides us-is asmall price to pay for the boundlessbenefits of freedom. That the abuse offreedom entails risks to innocent persons is one of the tragic facts of life.The children murdered at Jonestownare a somber reminder of the awesomepower parents have over their children-a power that, as Jonestown and othercommunal experiments have shown,the collectivization of the family canonly amplify.

Th e ultimate ugly and undeniablefacts are that of the 909 bodies atJonestown, 260 were those of children,butchered by the peaceloving, "humanitarian" followers of the ReverendJones; and that, like their leader, thesebutchers hated the open society an d"fled" their homeland to settle in asocialist country . The men an d womenofJonestown rejected liberty; it is as ifthey had turned Patrick Henry's maxim, "Give me liberty or give medeath!" on its head, and ha d swornallegiance to the maxim, "Give medeath rather than liberty!"

As for Congressman Ryan and hisparty, they paid a heavy price for theirnaivete and miscalculation, but, afterbeing warned repeatedly about Jonestown and after being emphatically disinvited by the inhabitants, their attempt to "liberate" would-be defectorswithout adequate arms was as illadvised as would be an attempt toscale the Alps without proper shoes orclothing. When Congressman Ryaninsisted on staging his inspection-invasion to foist on them the liberty theyloathed, the Jonestown patriots provedthat they had the courage of their convictions. The point is not merely thatactions speak louder than words, whichis obvious enough; it is rather that inthe base rhetoric of butchers-regardless of whether they come garbed aspriests, politicians, or physicians"love" means "hate"; "I will take careof you" means "I will kill you." r;,

JOEL KOTKIN &DOROTHrJ. SAMUELS

BeefermadnesrevisitedA FTER SEVERAL rEARoflying low, ducking the firecongressional committees acitizens' groups, the federal govement's drug enforcement officials aup to their old tricks again.

Back in the days of Nixon, as Eward Ja y Epstein showed in his booAgency of Fear, the administration athe nation's top narcs helped devand carry ou t the infamous "wardrugs," complete with stormtroopstyle raids on innocent families aother abuses of domestic civil libertiStirring up a nationwide heroin scathen exploiting the public's dreaddrugs to consolidate power, Nixodrug officials built a network of agebeyond constitutional control.

Now, theJustice Department's DrEnforcement Administration (DEthe bureaucratic offspring of Nixocampaign against drugs, has launchan offensive against marijuana. Inspeech last fall before the InternatioAssociation of Chiefs of Police in NYork City, DE A chief Peter Bensinfired the opening shot in this new btle, making various misleading claiabout the "real perils of marijuasmoking." It was just the first thrusa concerted drive to reverse the tretoward decriminalization and evetual legalization of the country's favite weed, an d to build political suport for stiff r drug penalties and, nincidentally, the DE A empire.

Bensinger's assertions about thealth risks of marijuana, which wJOEL KOTKI.N, a Los Angeles-basedreporter Jor the Washington Post, is writinga novel fo r Bantam Books. DOROTHr J.SAMUELS, a New rork attorney, is executivedirector of the Committee for Public Justice,a national civil liberties organi