Catholics Then, Muslims Now [NYT Op-Ed on why Muslims deserve our trust]

The New York Times ^ | 09/18/2012 | DOUG SAUNDERS

[Alex Murphy]

During the Republican primaries, Muslims were accused of harboring plans for “stealth Shariah.” A group of five Republican House members, led by Michele Bachmann, groundlessly accused two prominent Muslim federal officials of loyalty to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Another Republican representative, Joe Walsh of Illinois, used a campaign rally to suggest that Muslims in the Chicago suburbs were plotting to commit terrorist attacks. In New York City, the police spied on thousands of Muslims for six years without producing any evidence that could lead to an investigation....

....From the 19th century on, distrust, violence and, eventually, immigration restrictions were aimed at waves of Roman Catholic immigrants.

As late as 1950, 240,000 Americans bought copies of “American Freedom and Catholic Power,” a New York Times best seller. Its author, Paul Blanshard, a former diplomat and editor at The Nation, made the case that Catholicism was an ideology of conquest, and that its traditions constituted a form of “medieval authoritarianism that has no rightful place in the democratic American environment.”

Catholics’ high birthrates and educational self-segregation led Mr. Blanshard and others — including scholars, legislators and journalists — to warn of a “Catholic plan for America.”

Many Americans shunned such views, but some liberals did not. Mr. Blanshard’s book was endorsed by the likes of John Dewey and Bertrand Russell, and respected scholars like Seymour Martin Lipset, Reinhold Niebuhr and Sidney Hook debated Catholics’ supposed propensity toward authoritarianism.

Then, as now, there seemed to be evidence supporting the charge. Majority-Catholic countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal and Austria, had fallen into fascism or extremism. Crime and educational failure were rife among the children of Catholic immigrants. In the years after World War I, Catholic radicals carried out a deadly wave of terrorist attacks in the United States.

[Westbrook]

Liberalism truly is a mental disorder.

Here’s the difference between Christians and Moslems, simplified so even the most deranged leftist might be able to understand it.

Compare the life and teachings of Jesus Christ to those of Mohammed.

If Christians ever committed acts of terrorism, they were doing so AGAINST the teachings of Jesus.

When Moslems commit acts of terrorism, which they do many times a day throughout the world, they are doing so ACCORDING to the teachings of Mohammed.

[Durus]

It should also be mentioned that the "anarchists" of the early 1900s were not anarchists in any practical sense but ideologically were socialists/communists who used the term "anarchy" shamelessly. It's the typical "freedom through slavery" concept of socialism but in this case it they just wanted to over throw the current government and take it's place. Of course this would usher in tyranny so I guess it could be characterized as a "Tyranny through anarchy".

I think it's an important point as the Democrat party is realistically a socialist movement, and as the author of the original piece is a Democrat, he wishes to obfuscate his own movement's involvement in terrorism by blaming it on others. This is in addition to his idiotic attempt at providing an imaginary contextual framework in which he can equate a tyrannical, barbaric, immoral ideological movement posing as a religion with the Catholic church.