Bellesiles Misfires

History has its fair share of persecuted geniuses, men who were ahead of their time and made to pay for it. There's the hemlocked Socrates, the house-arrested Galileo, the exiled Rousseau. And to this list of giants it seems that we are now expected to add the name of Michael Bellesiles.

Exactly. It means it appears again, for those brousing at that time.

The significance of your thread is not just to expose this one lying fanatic, who believes like Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler, etc., that any lie is justified if it promotes his agenda. It captures that mindset, in the one excerpt, I quoted in my first response to it. The College students, getting massive doses of brainwashing on all sorts of subjects, by Professors with the same totalitarian mindset, need to be exposed to examples of the conceptual ethical bias of the Left in Academia, with every chance we get.

This is important, both in the context of the immediate struggle, and also, in the longer term battle that has no end.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

Liberal History = So what if it didn't happen - It should have happened - Therefore, it happened

I had a liberal tell me to my face that there's 'my truth' and 'their' truth', and other people's 'truths'. Astounding, and unclear on the definition of 'truth'.

Ergo, if something happened, and if you don't believe it happened, then it didn't happen. The person whith whom I had this discussion is otherwise intelligent and creative, and a nice guy overall. He's just got this intellectual disconnect where things involving logic are concerned.

I studied history at university (hey and even graduated).

Then you're aware that the doctrine of separation of church and state is not only not in the Constitution, but, in its present form, was not practiced at the time of the founding, or for the better part of the first century of this country's existence?

I think there are good arguments for the separation of church and state, but the Galileo story is not one of them. It's too bad that we as a people didn't have the chance to engage in those arguments, but rather had the doctrine created out of thin air by the courts with reference to an extra-constitutional document taken out of context.

"you are making excuses for tyranny"

From Websters.com:
Tyranny: (1) Oppressive Power; especially oppressive power exerted by a government

Oppressive: (1) unreasonably burdensome or severe

If keeping a single individual legally, temporarily and comfortably retained in the 16th century for violating the terms of his employment is tyrannical, considering the standards of the time , then I'll take some of that kind of tyranny in trade for what we call "progressive government" here in the secular 21st century.

Personally, I don't see much difference between house arrest and confiscatory tax rates. At least in Galileo's time, it only happened to a few individuals and for a couple of years, rather than vast segments of the population for their entire working lives. Considering we have 400 extra years of philosophy and history to have learned from, and by the standards of our time, I'd say we're the ones comparatively living in tyranny. Worse yet, its largely self-imposed.

I wonder what they'll think of us 400 years from now.

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