50 years ago today - Oct 27, 1961

[General] First Presidency counselor Hugh B. Brown tells a church member Frederick S. Buchanan that a Mormon "can be a Democrat or a Socialist and still be a good church member." Brown adds that "he had just had a talk with Bro Benson" who was "on the carpet in regard to his political sallies of late." Benson had stated in the Oct general conference that "No true Latter-day Saint and no true American can be a socialist or a communist or support programs leading in that direction- and "the internal threat to the American way of life is in the secret alliance which exists between the more advanced Social Democrats and the hard-core Communist conspiracy." Buchanan notes in his diary that Benson was leaving Brown-s office as he, Buchanan, was going in. A month later BYU president Ernest Wilkinson writes that Benson was privately criticizing "the socialistic tendencies" of Counselor Brown. And that that the two general authorities were already in "a vigorous dispute" about anti-Co
mmunism.

[Source: On This Day in Mormon History, http://onthisdayinmormonhistory.blogspot.com]