Posted on 05/06/2006 1:31:55 PM PDT by Mobile Vulgus
Once in a while an Op Ed will cross the wires that is so egregious, so absurd, that it deserves special attention. The honors this time goes to James Reston, Jr. (I am sure his Father would want us to distinguish the secondary status) for his surreal garbling of history in The American Inquisition, that he penned for USA Today. (Published on 4/17/06, go here for article)
Reston is obviously one of those anti-religious types who sees an evil "Right-wing Christian" around every corner. He takes his place as the newest member of the Chicken Little Club (maybe a Chicken Newdow, if you will), one who careens from newspaper to TV talking head show frenetically waving his arms about all the horrible Christians bringing us into an oppressive Theocracy. Reston is making a bid for head rooster of this wild-eyed sect, with this latest entry in hyperbole.
To make his point Reston falls back on his old stomping grounds of the Spanish Inquisition, a subject upon which he previously authored a book. Begun in the 15th century, the Inquisition is claimed to have taken some 32,000 lives in the many decades of its existence in Spain. It featured imprisonment, torture, murder and the forcible conversion of people from other religions to Catholicism. Certainly one of the blackest marks on Christendom's record.
But, like a bad "fan" of any particular subject, Reston finds the Inquisition everywhere he goes. And like the bore at a dinner party, he insists on letting us all know how much he knows of his subject and how that subject is an obvious allegory to everything going on around us. And also like that dinner party bore, he is woefully wrong.
Reston begins his piece with a quick history lesson of the Inquisition...
(Excerpt) Read more at publiusforum.com ...
I am calling this stuff gaslighting. These guys are on a withhunt acusing Republicans of witchhunting. They are always trying to avoid accountabiity by acusing the opposition of the crimes they do. This is especially true when they get on the voting machine kick to obscure that they steal elections fraudently. Listening to them gives me a headache.
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