How did the infidels win?

The Real History of the Crusades ^

Posted by RebelDawg
On News/Activism ^ 05/29/2002 6:43:31 PM PDT with 46 comments

crisismagazine ^ | April 1, 2002 | Thomas F. Madden
The Real History of the CrusadesBy Thomas F. MaddenWith the possible exception of Umberto Eco, medieval scholars are not used to getting much media attention. We tend to be a quiet lot (except during the annual bacchanalia we call the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of all places), poring over musty chronicles and writing dull yet meticulous studies that few will read. Imagine, then, my surprise when within days of the September 11 attacks, the Middle Ages suddenly became relevant.As a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower shattered by journalists, editors, and...

The Crusades in the Checkout Aisle: CRUSADES NONSENSE FROM U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT ^

Posted by Dr. Brian Kopp
On News/Activism ^ 04/12/2002 9:28:57 PM PDT with 25 comments

CRISIS Magazine - e-Letter ^ | April 12, 2002
The Crusades in the Checkout Aisle Thomas F. Madden When I spied the U.S. News & World Report with the Crusades splashed across its cover, I braced for the worst. As a crusade historian, I long ago learned not to expect accuracy on this subject from the popular media. In fact, I usually avoid newspaper and magazine articles on the Crusades altogether, if only to keep my blood pressure under control. But there it was, staring me in the face. I had to read it. First, the good news. The article, written by Andrew Curry, was not dreadful. Curry did...

From the time of Muhammad till the second siege of Vienna in 1683, Islamic civilization regarded the Christian West as a benighted backwater. Then things changed. Historian Bernard Lewis asks:

In the enormously rich historical literature developed during 14 centuries of Islamic history, until very recent times, there were no histories of countries or nations. Rather, there are histories of Islam and histories of particular dynasties or states within Islam. We think, for example, of the long wars involving the Muslims and the Europeans, the Moors in Spain, the Tartars in Russia or the Turks in Europe. But in the Muslim world, they do not describe encounters in these terms. They never use the words "Arab" or "Moors" or "Tartars" or "Turks" in this context. The division is always the wars between the Muslims and the unbelievers.

In the West, the nation is seen as the natural unit of identify and allegiance. But until recently, this was not so in the Muslim world. In modern times, the Arab world has been chopped up into what would apparently seem to be nation-states. But if you look at them closely, you can see their artificiality. Look at the borders. Most of North America's borders are straight lines. That's understandable because they were drawn with pencils and rulers on maps. The borders of Europe are different. They are not straight lines. They are the result of a thousand years of struggle. You would expect the same to be the case in the Middle East, where the entities are even more ancient than those of Europe. But no, their borders are straight lines drawn by Europeans. Perhaps even more remarkably, there is no word in Arabic for Arabia. This is not because Arabic is a poor language. On the contrary, Arabic is an incredibly rich language. It is because the Muslims simply did not think in terms of territorial ethnic identity.

I mention this point because I think it's important in understanding Muslim perceptions of what is going on.

In the Muslim perception, the world took a new turn in the 7th century when Islam was born and spread rapidly in all directions with enormous success. This was seen at the time, with some justification, as a challenge to other faiths. Anyone who has been to Jerusalem will surely have visited the Dome of the Rock. That magnificent structure is the oldest surviving Muslim religious building outside Arabia. If you go inside, you will see inscriptions written on the dome. One says "He is God. He is one. He does not beget. He is not begotten." This is an explicit rejection of certain basic Christian dogmas. By building this structure in Jerusalem of all places, which at that time was not yet regarded as a Muslim Holy City, by putting up this building with these inscriptions in Jerusalem, the Muslims were in effect saying to the Christian world -- and, in particular to the Christian emperor in Constantinople, "Your time has passed. Now we are here. Move over."

There has been a lot of talk of late about the clash of civilizations. Most of the civilizations known to history -- such as those of China, India, Greece, Rome, Egypt and Babylon -- have been regional. Christianity and Islam are different. These are the only two civilizations whose underlying religions claim not only that their truths are universal -- all religions claim that -- but also that their truths are exclusive. Both believe that they are the fortunate recipients of God's final revelation to mankind, and it is therefore their duty to bring it to the rest of the world. It is inevitable that you will have a clash between two religions that are geographically adjacent, historical consecutive, theologically akin.

For a long time, Islam got the better of this clash. For a period of centuries, the civilization of Islam was by far the most advanced and the most creative in the world. It was enormously successful in every material sense. Its armies coming out of Arabia conquered everything across the Middle East and North Africa. They invaded Europe, conquering Spain, Portugal, Southern Italy and even advancing into France. Eastwards, they advanced across to Central Asia and India. Muslims also developed a highly sophisticated economic system of production and exchange with a remarkably advanced system of banking and credit. As far back as the 10th century, a Muslim merchant or a non-Muslim merchant living under Muslim rule could draw a cheque in Southern Iraq and cash it in Morocco.

From the perspective of Muslims, Western Europe was a kind of outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief, a primitive tribe beyond the border to which they gave understandably little attention. There was nothing to fear and nothing to learn. On the contrary, it was the Europeans who went to the great Muslim universities in Spain, in Sicily and in the East. In those centuries, Europe -- meaning Christendom as Muslims saw it -- was a poor benighted backwater.

Then things changed. The change was gradual, and took place over a vast area and a long period. But what brought the change home were rather dramatic single events. One of those events was the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683.

It is important to remember that, in the 17th century, Islam was still threatening Europe, not the other way around. Turkish pashas were still ruling in Budapest and in Belgrade. Corsairs from North Africa were still raiding the European coasts, including the coasts of England and Ireland and, on one occasion, even Iceland -- collecting human booty for sale in the slave markets of Algiers.

The first Turkish siege of Vienna ended in a sort of draw. But the second siege, in 1683, was a disaster. A Turkish historian of the time, describing the episode, said: "This is the most calamitous defeat that we have suffered since the foundation of our state." One must admire his candour and regret that similar candour is rarely to be found among present day historians of the region.

The defeat outside Vienna was followed by a headlong retreat through the Balkans and a peace treaty, the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, the first ever imposed on a defeated Ottoman empire by victorious Christian European enemies.

The lessons of history are often taught on the battlefield. In this case, the lesson was clear.

Among Muslims, the debate began at the beginning of the 18th century, and has been going on ever since. The main question: What went wrong?

There was a growing awareness that Muslims, who had always been victorious, were now losing on the battlefield, in the marketplace and, in fact, in every significant field of human endeavor. The debate became increasingly agonized, and continues to the present day.

When you become aware that things are going wrong, there are two ways you can approach the problem. First, you can ask "What are they doing right?" There were many Muslims who followed this line of inquiry, and experimented with Western forms of warfare and weaponry, Western-style factories, parliaments and the like.

The second approach is to say "Who did this to us?" This of course leads into a twilight world of anti-Western conspiracy theories and neurotic fantasies. Unfortunately, this approach has prevailed in many parts of the Muslim world to the present day.

In answering the question, "Who did this to us?" Muslims have often blamed "Imperialists." (Of course, when Muslims were invading Europe, imperialist expansionism was seen as natural and good because the invaders were bringing the word of God to the heathens. When the Europeans, after centuries of Muslim domination, counterattacked on the other hand, this was wicked.) In this regard, the United States has now inherited the role of its Christian predecessors. As many Muslims see it, the world continues to be divided between the Islamic world and its age-old imperialist rival, the Christian world. This division is at the heart of the writings of Osama Bin Laden and his complaints about the "crusader" presence in Saudi Arabia and so forth.

Even after the second siege of Vienna, the Arab world was largely shielded from reality by Ottoman power, even in the era of Ottoman decline and retreat. But eventually, that came to an end.

The modern history of the Arab world is generally held to begin at the end of the 18th century, when the French Republic sent a small expeditionary force commanded by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt. To the utter shock and horror of the Egyptians and everyone else in the region, this small army from France was able to invade, conquer, occupy and govern Egypt without the slightest difficulty. The fact that an army from the West managed to penetrate one of the heartlands of the Islamic world -- not just Vienna or the Balkans -- was a terrible shock.

But if the arrival of the French was a shock, their departure was a second and perhaps more salutary shock. The eviction of the French was accomplished not by the Egyptians, nor by the Turks, but by a small squadron of the Royal Navy commanded by a young Admiral called Horatio Nelson.

The lesson was clear: A European power could come to the region and do what it pleased, and only another European power could get them out. Thus began the game, so to speak, of playing European powers off against one another.

For two centuries or more, the scenario remained the same -- though the players were sometimes different. In the final phase, the players were the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States; and Middle Eastern leaders used the skills they had perfected over two centuries in playing them off against each other.

Then, suddenly, it came to an end. The phase in history that had been initiated by Bonaparte and Nelson was terminated by Bush and Gorbachev. Suddenly, there was no rivalry; there were no rival powers. First one and then the other seemed disinclined to play the Imperial role -- the Russians because they couldn't and the Americans because they wouldn't.

Some Muslim leaders are trying to keep playing the old game, and so are seeking another power to play off against the West, as it is embodied by the United States. The prime candidate is the European Union, or at least some parts of the European Union where there is a negative sentiment regarding America. Unfortunately, for those who pursue this policy, even if the Europeans have the will to play this role, they lack the ability.

The other, and at first sightly more promising response to the end of the Cold War, was that of Osama bin Laden. He and his followers make it perfectly clear in their writings that they regard the defeat of the Soviet Union as their achievement -- through their long struggle in Afghanistan. I think you must agree it is not by any means an implausible explanation of what happened.

Where are we now? Within the Islamic world, more particularly the Middle Eastern world, I think one must divide countries in terms of their attitude to the West into three zones. One zone comprises those countries that have governments that we are pleased to regard as pro-Western and pro-American. These governments are therefore, and I stress the word "therefore," cordially detested by their people. They are detested not because they are pro-West but because they are regarded as Western puppets and therefore the West is held responsible for the corruption and tyranny of these regimes. It is no accident that most of the hijackers and terrorists on Sept. 11 came from countries with Western-friendly governments.

A second group are countries with hostile governments. I am thinking in particular of Iraq and Iran, perhaps also Syria. These are bitterly anti-American and anti-Western; and therefore their peoples are very pro-Western and pro-American. Let me relate an Iranian joke that I heard only last week from an Iranian, which I think captures the mood. (Jokes are often the only uncensored form of comment in these countries.) When American planes began to fly over Afghanistan, many Iranians put out notices over their houses saying, "This way, please."

In these countries whose governments detest the West, all the indications are that there is general goodwill toward the West among the people. In Iran, for example, after 9/11, great numbers of people went out into the streets and lit candles in sympathy vigils. This did not happen in nominally U.S.-friendly countries like Saudi Arabia; quite the reverse.

The third group comprises the Middle Eastern countries where both the government and the people are friendly. There are just two countries in this categories: Turkey and Israel, which happen to be the only two countries with functioning democracies.

Let me end with a discussion about Western influence in the Middle East. We tend to think of modernization and Westernization as good things. And, in many ways, they have been good things. But they have also done tremendous damage to Muslim societies. They have, for example, strengthened dictatorship to a degree that was never possible previously.

Modernization has strengthened the central power, and given the government new means of surveillance and repression. This has made possible that ultimate example of Westernization -- the one-party dictatorship. It flourishes in Syria and in Iraq at the present time in a way that combines the Nazi and Soviet models.

Westernization also has the effect of enfeebling or eliminating the limiting powers within a society. In traditional societies, there were many limiting powers that acted as constraints on government power. There were the urban patricians, the country nobility, the religious establishment, the military establishment and others. All these were enfeebled or abolished and made subject to the central authority.

There was a time when socialism and nationalism were the two most widely accepted creeds in the Middle East -- particularly after the end of the Second World War, when the Soviets had won great victories in Eastern Europe. The British Labour Party had won a great electoral victory, throwing out the mighty Winston Churchill. Socialism was seen as the wave of the future. So they brought in a whole series of socialist governments all over the Arab world. There was some debate. Some said that we must have Arab socialism; that is to say socialism, but adjusted to the different Arab cultural context. Others said, "No, that's nonsense. We must have scientific socialism," meaning the Moscow Marxists' variety. By now, I think they would all agree that socialism is neither Arab nor scientific.

The other great slogan of the time was nationalism, which was supposed to bring freedom, throwing off the foreign yoke. Unfortunately, there was some confusion between freedom and independence. Indeed, in most of the places that had previously been under Imperial rule, they had less freedom under independence than they had under foreign rule. So you had the two ideas discredited -- socialism discredited by its failure; nationalism discredited by its success. These were the two great movements that dominated public discourse and public life in these countries for half a century. Both are dead. Both are gone. So, where do they turn now?

Basically there are two alternative approaches. One is the approach of those who ask, "What did we do wrong?" and who feel that the way forward is to modernize their societies but to do it properly and, most important of all, with a measure of democratization of their political institutions and liberalization of their economies.

On the other hand you have those who say: "The source of all our troubles was the West" -- either what Westerners themselves did or, more frequently and more importantly, what Westernizing local "puppets" or imitators did. And the remedy, therefore, is to go back to back in time to the true, authentic, original Islam. This is the remedy proposed by the Islamic Republic in Iran and also by the various terrorist movements.

The choice between the two approaches is an awe-inspiring one; and, at this point, I would not like to predict which way it will go. It is, of course, going both ways at the present time.

Bernard Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He has written numerous books about Islam, including, most recently, What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. This essay is adapted from a May 30 speech delivered by Prof. Lewis in Toronto as part of the Donner Canadian Foundation Lecture Series.

"...Just 58 years ago, that civilization bled, died, and buried its finest sons here; to save others. ....."

I'm afraid I cannot agree with you. The civilization that sacrificed itself then is a far cry the civilization that erected the Trade Towers. May I quote some words written by ciceros_son on this very troubling subject of aesthetics, architecture and culture?

"....... In another of his books, "Living Machines: Bauhaus as Sexual Ideology" he address the peculiar psycho-sexual worldview of Gropius and his circle. The self-confessed purpose of Bauhaus architecture was to create a world where man is a sexual nomad, completely uprooted from family, God, and even sense of place....

...The Great Idiot Muschamp (architecture critic for the NY Times) considers Mies van der Rohe's Seagram's Building (essentially a giant black steel turd)the highest expression of this. I heard a man say that you could tell what a society valued by looking at which of their buildings were the tallest... I would add that the quality of the archictecture is indicative of a society's values. Look at how we build today. Giant, inhumanly scaled scyscrapers sheathed in steel and glass and devoid of any ornamentation. Flat tops (suggesting that there is nothing to a-spire to outside the building itself?). Sharp edges--geometry as destiny.

One of the fathers of modern achitecture, a leading light of the Brutalist school, actually said that to build something beautiful is a "sin." That's one of the more audacious examples of antinomianism and depravity in modern architecture. The purposeful uglification of Western cities...Imagine!

"Progressive" architecture has always part of the materialist vanguard. Through it, they effectively create new facts on the ground, a social ambience suggestive of their empty view of human nature and human dignity...."

"...On October 4th 1997, the Washington Mall was filled up from the Capitol reflection pool to the Washington Monument with men, on their faces before God..."

Nor can the civilization of our Patriarchs be found in that spectacle of men gathered in the Capital city--the sick heart--of the problem, to perform highly public acts of penance and even self-abasement---(in defiance of the words of Jesus Himself about prayer, if you ask me.) It seems, in some strange way, to be a human version of the architectural deformations of our time. More ominously, that gathering was an imitation of an even more ghastly oriental spectacle--the not-quite-million-man-march. Both gatherings indicate a crisis in American manhood, not a resurgence. I'm sorry to disagree with you so much about this.

Is short, I find this an indescribably sinister photo:

The civilization that engineered the sleek, antiseptic, bulky rectangles on the tip of Manhattan island will NOT be able to prevail, in the long run, against it's many enemies. It's too fragile--too rootless. But maybe, with some sort of miraculous intervention, the civilization that inspired the tiny church at the base of the Trade Towers--crushed in the collapse--will.

Casting your pearls before swine again, I see? :-)

Too many of the knuckle-dragging, chest-thumping, flag-waving crowd cannot distinguish between friend or foe, or between those who want to defend the West by reversing its slide into decadence, from those who want to destroy the West because (for various reasons) the West is an affront to their very being.

The article (apart from whatever motivations are driving the author) is actually fairly good in communicating a number of facts about Islamic culture which Westerners don't understand. Actually, this was all explained in great detail by Oswald Spengler in the Decline of the West, and further elaborate on by Lawrence Brown in the Might of the West (a difficult book to find nowadays).

Every civilization has its own form of nations; for the classical civilization, it was the polis or city-state. For the West it is the nation-state. For the Levant (what Spengler calls the Magian civilization), it was the sect-nation.

The sect-nation has no borders; it exists wherever its members (believers in its sacred books and religion) exist. The sect-nation may have a state of its own (as the Orthodox sect-nation did under Byzantium, as the Zoroastrian sect-nation did under the Sasanian dynasty of Persia, or later, as the Islamic sect-nation did under the first caliphs and their successors), or it may not.

Other sect-nations either never had their own state, or lost control of it; as is the case with most Levantine sect-nations, in fact: the Jews, Samaritans, various Christian sect-nations (Nestorians, Monophysites, Marcionites, Arians, etc.), various Gnostic sects, Mandeans, Manicheans, "neo-pagans" (i.e., neo-platonism and the "pagan church" of the Emperor Julian), Buddhists (as they then existed in Central Asia/Afghanistan), etc. These stateless sect-nations lived under the authority of their host sect-nation, but seperately and according to their own laws. So, for instance, Jews lived under their own laws under both Christians and Moslems; Monophysites and Nestorians lived under Orthodox rule; later under Moslem rule; etc.

The West may have gotten its religion from the Levant, but it quickly transformed it to make it suitable to Western assumptions and Western values. As such we have never had anything comparable to the Levantine sect-nation. It is not suprising that the Islamic world has had great difficulty dealing with the West: it simply is not used to organizing itself in the manner Westerners are used to. Existing Arab states, for instance, are the product of Western imperialism against the Ottoman Empire in WWI; the regimes in these countries are not "national" in the Western sense, but are merely the personal property, as it were, of the ruling families controlling the Arab states in question, to do with as they see fit. Not suprisingly they are corrupt (this is very different from Islam before Western influence, when the state was very limited and decentralized).

As it is with the form of the nation, so too with science. Every civilization has had its science, which asked questions basic to the nature of the civilization. Do not confuse Western science with all science, as such. No other civilization produced Western science, not because they were stupid, but because they were not thinking as Westerners do. They did not ask the question "by what mechanism does Nature work, if a certain thing comes to pass". Westerners unconsciously asked this question centuries before they had a science capable of producing modern technology, but only by asking these questions - thinking like a Westerner - could the fruits of Western science eventually be produced.

The Levant did not think this way - and this goes not just for the Moslems, but for the Christians, Jews, and all the rest, as well (don't confuse Western Christianity with Levantine Christianity, or Westernized Jews with non-Westernized Jews). Instead of asking the Western question about the mechanism of Nature (assuming a thing is to happen), the Levant asked "what is the means by which we may have foreknowledge of how things will happen (according to the will of God)....or, what is the causality of the actual event?" The causality of the actual event (ie, asking not "what causes things to happen, if they happen, but rather, asking "how can we know this will happen, or not"?) leads to the creation of sciences which we Westerners do not think of as sciences at all (anymore): Astrology and Alchemy, for instance. But even though we consider divination unscientific and irrational, it is neither, if one is working within Levantine assumptions.

Levantine science produced a vast store of knowledge about many things - in medicine and math, particularly. It was far in advance of anything the West would produce until the 1600's. However, Islamic civilization was never, ever, going to lead to Western style science, nor could it ever produce the vast new fields of technology and industry which Western science was going to eventually produce. One cannot build such a science on the "causality of the actual event" (nor is Western science in any way a continuation of Greek science, which was built on quite different assumptions, and asked different questions, then those that Western science would ask).

Worse, for Islam, was the fact that even this level of science and learning was going to be destroyed. There is a book which exists from the end of the flowering of Arabic science which lists all of the scientific texts and books of learning which existed in the Arabic language at that time (some of them translated into Arabic from Greek, Persian, and Sanskrit). Of this vast collection of books, less than one in a thousand exist today (imagine where we would be if 99.9% of the titles in the Library of Congress were to disappear from the face of the Earth). The Mongol invasions, which were truly genocidal, have been blamed for this, but that is only partly the cause, and mostly an effect, of this loss of learning.

The real root of the problem was that the Islamic world lost interest in learning, and reverted to religious fundamentalism. Since God is the cause of each and every event, it follows that one cannot study nature to discover the laws of nature, because these "laws" are illusory: God is the cause of the actual event; to attribute the cause to something else is therefore blasphemous. Once this fundamentalist religous attitude gained widespread popularity, scientific learning became increasingly difficult until it withered altogether. An Islamic culture still interested in learning could have repaired the damage of the Mongols; instead it ignored the books and let them molder unread until they were no more. The will of God, and his word (the Koran) were the only things the believer needed.

Because of this, Islam stagnated, and found it impossible to learn from the West (whereas the West had no problem learning what it could from Islam during the early middle ages). Worse, the radical Islamicist elements inside the Islamic world today are trying to reverse what little progress has been made towards modernization. Their attitudes are not unkown amongst some religious types (or irreligious political types) within the West, but these have never had much influence.

Getting back to your comment, I agree with you about the fragility and rootlessness of the West today. Rootlessness is one thing the fundamentalists do not have to worry about: they are quite sure that they have the answers to everything. So the question is open, whether the West is to be eaten from without by alien fundamentalisms, or from within, by native fundamentalisms (whether of the religious or the political variety).

Are we going to go the way of the Roman Empire (which was gradually transformed from within by the rising Levantine culture of the time), or are we going to find some way to preserve the West at the expense of its enemies? Preserving the West also demands reforming the West, of course.

"... Are we going to go the way of the Roman Empire (which was gradually transformed from within by the rising Levantine culture of the time), or are we going to find some way to preserve the West at the expense of its enemies? Preserving the West also demands reforming the West, of course..."

Your post #64 was really interesting. It highlights one of the weaknesses of the internet--that these conversations are so difficult to keep up---not like sitting around a blazing fire conversing.

Just a few chaotic thoughts----Don't forget that Rome transformed as well as being transformed. The simplistic Gibbonesque view is not adequate the task of understanding Western Civilization---or the lastingnature of Rome. One of the most frustrating things for me is the current lack of knowledge about the many tidepools that fed into our civilization---what's left of it. I find myself so impatient with so-called Christian fundamentalists---obviously educated in American Public schools---who have no knowlege of Western Civilization--except perhaps a visit to the Museum of the Holocaust on the Washington Mall---and accordingly what they do know, they hate---as all good enlightened folks must do to the dark and wicked past.

My mind also went off in many directions when thinking about the task of preserving the West while reading through one of the "evil Skakel/Kennedys get their cumeuppance" threads.

Our Ruling Class is remarkable for its barbarism. American political, cultural, economic Elites are totally unconnected to the land in any way. The subtext of the most oppressive legislation pouring out of Washington for the past 50 years (or even longer) has been the destruction of a landed, rooted way of life by wandering barbarians. Whenever one reads of an incident, like the murder of Martha Moxley, one is struck by the lack of community solidarity that characterizes so many of our rich and influential people.

I just finished reading a hair-raising book about the struggle over school busing in the seventies and there it is again--that struggle between powerful, savage barbarians in Washington and an uncomprehending, helpless peasantry. The Elite who forced that unnatural way of life down the throats of the benighted red-necks were cosmopolitan folks; people who spent every holiday in a different locale.

I think of the Normans and the incredible contributions to human history they made---after they set down roots. I see no hope for such an event in America or Europe---quite the contrary. The myths of Free Market mercantilism, the deforming effects of democracy worship, and the passivity and cluelessness of a huge portion of the population (maybe they're punch-drunk) make renewal impossible, in my opinion. Certainly it would require applied violence and the political and religious Elite have promulgated an artificial teaching of passivity--wrapped in the warm, fuzzy security blanket of "non-violence--so effectively that the American middle class--the class upon which any renewal would depend--is totally unsuited to the task.

I don't know if you happened to see this thread but it is another tiny piece of evidence in my case---or my rant, if you prefer:

Barbarian invasion #742

You will notice how passive, how helpless the natives are. But the article ends with a great big slurp of American middle class Kool-aid---

"... Forces far beyond our control drive this transformation. The key to successful accommodation requires recognition of this relentless change. Our best bet is to prepare our children for the changing economy and rejoice in their success. Only excellent education will provide it. This, not attempts to recapture the past, is our best investment. Buy it...."

Another passing thought---compare the treatment given "right-winger" Pym Fortuyn in the Western press to that given Jean--the demon from hell---Marie Le Pen. This remarkable difference goes a long way towards revealing what will be allowed and, more importantly, what will not, in the struggle for Western identity.

And, what will be allowed, is essentially, nothing......

stumbled across this topic, and the two quoted below, quite by accident, please forgive the intrusion:

The Real History of the Crusades ^

Posted by RebelDawg
On News/Activism ^ 05/29/2002 6:43:31 PM PDT with 46 comments

crisismagazine ^ | April 1, 2002 | Thomas F. Madden
The Real History of the CrusadesBy Thomas F. MaddenWith the possible exception of Umberto Eco, medieval scholars are not used to getting much media attention. We tend to be a quiet lot (except during the annual bacchanalia we call the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of all places), poring over musty chronicles and writing dull yet meticulous studies that few will read. Imagine, then, my surprise when within days of the September 11 attacks, the Middle Ages suddenly became relevant.As a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower shattered by journalists, editors, and...

The Crusades in the Checkout Aisle: CRUSADES NONSENSE FROM U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT ^

Posted by Dr. Brian Kopp
On News/Activism ^ 04/12/2002 9:28:57 PM PDT with 25 comments

CRISIS Magazine - e-Letter ^ | April 12, 2002
The Crusades in the Checkout Aisle Thomas F. Madden When I spied the U.S. News & World Report with the Crusades splashed across its cover, I braced for the worst. As a crusade historian, I long ago learned not to expect accuracy on this subject from the popular media. In fact, I usually avoid newspaper and magazine articles on the Crusades altogether, if only to keep my blood pressure under control. But there it was, staring me in the face. I had to read it. First, the good news. The article, written by Andrew Curry, was not dreadful. Curry did...

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