Posted on 10/30/2006 1:49:17 PM PST by headsonpikes
....It is almost surreal now to read about the elemental hatred of Jews in the Spanish Inquisition, 19th-century Russian pogroms or the Holocaust. Yet here we are revisiting the old horrors of the savage past.
Beheading? As we saw with Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, our Neanderthal enemies in the Middle East have resurrected that ancient barbarity — and married it with 21st-century technology to beam the resulting gore instantaneously onto our computer screens. Xerxes and Attila, who stuck their victims' heads on poles for public display, would've been thrilled by such a gruesome show.
Who would have thought centuries after the Enlightenment that sophisticated Europeans — in fear of radical Islamists — would be afraid to write a novel, put on an opera, draw a cartoon, film a documentary or have their pope discuss comparative theology?....
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
VDH neglects to note that the heads of tyrants were also placed on pikes upon their overthrow, for the information of the public in the absence of network TV. ;^)
You might enjoy this. ;^)
It neglect to mention that the Spanish Inquisition was the mop up job that finished driving the Moslems out of Spain. The Jews in Spain ended up on the recieving end of that mess because they sided with the Moslems in that particular conflict.
How come you always come up with these articles?;)
I did not know that.
susie
There must have been a sizable diaspora of the Jewish people from Spain about that time. A number of them fled to Germany and Ireland, and from there to the New World, to avoid persecution.
There is some evidence that the Mellungeon people of Appalachia are descended from these Mediterranean Jewish (Sephardic) people (DNA studies).
From Wiki:
On March 31, 1492, scarcely three months after the reconquest concluded with the fall of the last Nazari Kingdom of Granada, Ferdinand and Isabella promulgated a decree ordering the expulsion of Jews from all their kingdoms. Jewish subjects were given until July 31 of the same year to choose between accepting baptism and leaving the country definitively. Although the decree allowed them to take all their possessions with them, land-holdings, of course, had to be sold, and gold, silver and coined money were forfeit. The reason given to justify this measure was that the proximity of unconverted Jews served as a reminder of their former faith and seduced many conversos into relapsing and returning to the practice of Judaism.
....
The number of the Jews that left Spain is not known, not even with an approximation. Historians of the period give extremely high figures (Juan de Mariana speaks of 800,000 people, and Isaac Abravanel of 300,000). Nevertheless, current estimates significantly reduce this number. (Henry Kamen estimates that, of a population of approximately 80,000 Jews, about one half or 40,000 chose emigration [7]). The Spanish Jews emigrated mainly to Portugal (where they were later expelled in 1497) and to Morocco. Much later, the Sefardim, descendants of Spanish Jews, established flourishing communities in many cities of Europe, North Africa, and, mainly, in the Ottoman Empire.
You're not supposed to mention this. It conflicts with what everyone has been taught to be true. Try not to mention the fact that the Inquisition was responsible for about 5,000 executions and that many defendants preferred the judicially rational procedures of the Inquisition to the secular trial processes of those days.
The "Enlightenment" and its consequential aftermath was and is a distinctly western phenomenon. Islam, in its continuing decay, never sought such enlightenment. For muslims, the world seems to have been fully defined by the Koran. Perhaps, that is why there are no great Arab authors, no great Arab universities and no great Arab teaching hospitals. We, in the West, are now faced with a resurgence of primitivism, an active campaign to return us all to an intellectual dark ages. How seriously we take that challenge and what we elect do about it will determine our future.
Been posted. As Tolik say, Victor David Hansen Nails IT.
Never heard of these people. Where in Appalachia do they live, what kind of last names? Now that I think of it, Granny always did make possum soup for colds. The Beverly Hillbenjies.
And from among them there arose a king who would lead them to freedom and glory. They called this king "Elvis".
Use the "Web Search engine" (Google, Yahoo!, or Ask.com) to check out the information. There is a considerable amount of anecdotal information, and some of the "success stories" of the more prominent members of this interesting subgroup of American settlers (Ava Gardner, Abraham Lincoln, and of course, Elvis Presley are all rumored to have been descended).
Remember, the correct spelling is "Mellungeon". They apparently all originated from a relatively small gene pool, and intermarried with several of the local Indian tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek)
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