[Cicero]

I really don't think Victor Davis Hanson understands the Pope, or what his initiative has already achieved. Too bad, because I usually enjoy reading his work.

Hanson is a bright guy, but Pope Benedict can think circles around him.

[ChiMark]

If you read this carefully you will realize Hanson is
not berating the Pope in any way.

[tpaine]

I really don't think Victor Davis Hanson understands the Pope, or what his initiative has already achieved. Too bad, because I usually enjoy reading his work.

Perhaps VDH reads and understands the FR 'type' too much for you?

"-- Those in an auto parts store in Fresno, or at a NASCAR race in southern Ohio, might appear to Europeans as primordials with their guns, "fundamentalist" religion, and flag-waving chauvinism.
But it is they, and increasingly their kind alone, who prove the bulwarks of the West.
Ultimately what keeps even the pope safe and the continent confident in its vain dialogues with Iranian lunatics is the United States military and the very un-Europeans who fight in it. --"

[RKV]

Not really.

[Valin]

I really don't think Victor Davis Hanson understands the Pope, or what his initiative has already achieved.

Could you expand please. Thanks.

[Tenacious 1]

[Hanson is a bright guy, but Pope Benedict can think circles around him.]

I am not so sure, but I can see by this article why offense can be taken. I don't think Hanson intentions were to belittle the Pope or his intent. I believe our Pope, for years now, has been surrounded with bad advisers. The Church's tepid political approach has weakened the foundation of the house built by Peter. Jesus did not equivocate on morals and values. There was right and wrong, righteous and evil. The Pope's follow up to the uprising is easily perceived as pandering, appeasement, apology and/or equivocating by the media and the faithful alike. I don't think Hanson is picking on the Pope but rather using the incident to reinforce his argument about the cultural weakness in Europe and to highlight what America's future holds if we don't take notice.

I think the Pope and our church would have been better served had Pope Bededict come out and stated unequivocally,

"My words were not offensive. I quoted an ancient leader. My point was obviously missed by the followers of Islam. Let me restate my point and try to be more clear. There is no God that wishes his faithful followers to murder innocent women, children, fathers, brothers and sons. Those that kill innocent women and children in the name of Allah are guilty of a mortal sin, need to repent and change their ways. Or else be condemned to hell by our most forgiving and gracious Lord."

[Mrs. Don-o]

Hanson is an intelligent man whom I respect (and could get into a helluva dispute with) --- for instance, over this:

"And so Europe has done us a great favor in showing us not the way of the future, but the old cowardice of our pre-Enlightenment past."

Cowardice? Pre-Enlighenment?

It wasn't Locke or Voltaire who had the intellectual courage to bring the thought of Aristotle and Averroes into the University and dared to defend the ultimate compatibility of faith and reason by argument alone --- the equivalent of a Unified Field Theory of the Universe. It wasn't David Hume or Jean-Jacques Rousseau who mounted the barricades, crimson with gore, and saved Europe from the scimatars of Islam.

If it hadn't been for courageous intellectuals like Aquinas, and rough men of valor like Don John of Austria and King Jan Sobieski, there's be no West to save.

I'm glad to give the "Enightenment" its due (though I think it's misnamed and overrated), but Victor Davis Hanson himself --- the author of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power --- knows darn well tht it wasn't the Enlightenment, its men, its values, or its EU successors --- which has the power or the courage save us now.