Vox Popoli

I was reading Alexandre Dumas’s pop history of the Borgia family while travelling yesterday and ran across an interesting letter that helps demonstrate how religion is not and has never been a significant cause of war. Now, the history of war between the Muslim Ottoman Empire and Christendom is a long and famous one, and yet even during that intractable struggle, there were numerous examples of other, more fundamental causes of division than the religious differences, as can be seen in this polite, but deadly request from the Sultan of the Turkish Empire to the Holy Father in Rome.

“Bajazet the Sultan, son of the Sultan Mahomet II, by the grace of God Emperor of Asia and Europe, to the Father and Lord of all the Christians, Alexander VI, Roman pontiff and pope by the will of heavenly Providence, first, greetings that we owe him and bestow with all our heart. We make known to your Highness, by the envoy of your Mightiness, Giorgio Bucciarda, that we have been apprised of your convalescence, and received the news thereof with great joy and comfort. Among other matters, the said Bucciarda has brought us word that the King of France, now marching against your Highness, has shown a desire to take under his protection our brother D’jem, who is now under yours–a thing which is not only against our will, but which would also be the cause of great injury to your Highness and to all Christendom.

In turning the matter over with your envoy Giorgio we have devised a scheme most conducive to peace and most advantageous and honourable for your Highness; at the same time satisfactory to ourselves personally; it would be well if our aforesaid brother D’jem, who being a man is liable to death, and who is now in the hands of your Highness, should quit this world as soon as possible, seeing that his departure, a real good to him in his position, would be of great use to your Highness, and very conducive to your peace, while at the same time it would be very agreeable to us, your friend. If this proposition is favourably received, as we hope, by your Highness, in your desire to be friendly towards us, it would be advisable both in the interests of your Highness and for our own satisfaction that it should occur rather sooner than later, and by the surest means you might be pleased to employ; so that our said brother D’jem might pass from the pains of this world into a better and more peaceful life, where at last he may find repose. If your Highness should adapt this plan and send us the body of our brother, We, the above-named Sultan Bajazet, pledge
ourselves to send to your Highness, wheresoever and by whatsoever hands you please, the sum of 300,000 ducats, With which sum you could purchase some fair domain for your children. In order to facilitate this purchase, we would be willing, while awaiting the issue, to place the 300,000 ducats in the hands of a third party, so that your Highness might be quite certain of receiving the money on an appointed day, in return for the despatch of our brother’s body. Moreover, we promise your Highness herewith, for your greater satisfaction, that never, so long as you shall remain on the pontifical throne, shall there be any hurt done to the Christians, neither by us, nor by our servants, nor by any of our compatriots, of whatsoever kind or condition they may be, neither on sea nor on land.

And for the still further satisfaction of your Highness, and in order that no doubt whatever may remain concerning the fulfilment of our promises, we have sworn and affirmed in the presence of Bucciarda, your envoy, by the true God whom we adore and by our holy Gospels, that they shall be faithfully kept from the first point unto the last. And now for the final and complete assurance of your Highness, in order that no doubt may still remain in your heart, and that you may be once again and profoundly convinced of our good faith, we the aforesaid Sultan Bajazet do swear by the true God, who has created the heavens and the earth and all that therein is, that we will religiously observe all that has been above said and declared, and in the future will do nothing and undertake nothing that may be contrary to the interests of your Highness.

“Given at Constantinople, in our palace, on the 12th of September A.D. 1494.”

It should surprise no one that Alexander VI, being the second and more notorious of the Borgia Popes, did not shirk from poisoning D’Jem, but not before selling him to Charles VIII of France, thus arranging to profit not once, not twice, but thrice from the one-time claimant to the Turkish throne. And, of course, Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy led at least one Christian prince to forge an alliance with the Muslim Sultan against his co-religionist.

I haven’t worked out one side of the equation yet, but I daresay that intra-family rivalries have been the cause of at least twice as many wars as religion. Notice how Bajazet is putting out the contract on his brother in the interest of peace; that’s clearly pre-modern as these days the correct appeal would be “for the children”.

You may recall that I cited the fact that American hospitals count live births differently than do those of other countries due to the superior American health prenatal care to disprove Sam Harris’s attempt to blame the USA’s rate of infant mortality on its highly religious population in Letter to a Christian Nation. It turns out that it’s not only technology that makes the USA’s prenatal care superior, but also the fact that it is less centralized, thereby avoiding the ever-present rationing of the socialist systems:

Carri Ash is one of at least 40 mothers or their babies who’ve been airlifted from British Columbia to the U.S. this year because Canadian hospitals didn’t have room for the preemies in their neonatal units.

“It’s a big number and bigger than the previous capacity of the system to deal with it,” said Adrian Dix, a British Columbia legislator, told FOXNews.com. “So when that happens, you can’t have a waiting list for a mother having the baby. She just has the baby.”

The mothers have been flown to hospitals in Seattle, Everett, Wash., and Spokane, Wash., to receive treatment, as well as hospitals in the neighboring province of Alberta, Dix said. Three mothers were airlifted in the first weekend of October alone, including Carri Ash.

Clearly, the proper irreligious thing to do would be to deny these Canadian infants care and let them die uncounted like a good, post-Christian European country would. Can you believe the outrageously primitive those Bible-thumping, predominantly Christian, science-challenged Americans are?

But… but… but the Republicans assured us for years that Iraq had absolutely nothing in common with Vietnam!

To end the Vietnam War fiasco, the U.S. did exactly what you are calling for in this Iraq fiasco: Get out now! We did get out in Nam and immediately, and nearly 3 million innocent souls were slaughtered by Pol Pot. Question: Are you not even a bit concerned that another “killing fields” situation will occur, as will surely come to pass this time in much larger numbers?

“The idea that millions of Iraqis would be slaughtered in a new Holocaust is a paranoid fantasy promulgated by the Bush administration to manipulate popular emotion in the U.S., where knowledge of world geography and history has shrunk decade by decade, thanks to our mediocre public education and our shallow, timid and increasingly frivolous mainstream media.”

Word ’em up! The answer is obviously to withdraw from Iraq and invade the public schools. Wipe out the terrorist educators and their sympathizers in the media!

Clearly we need a new right-wing blogosphere that is actually right-wing, as John Hawkins polls the so-called right-wing blogosphere regarding their least favorite person on the right:

4) Larry Craig (13)
4) Michael Savage (13)
3) John McCain (17)
2) Pat Buchanan (18)
1) Ron Paul (23)

What a pathetic joke. The six of the top ten on the list of “right-wing” favorites aren’t fit to sniff Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan’s jockstraps. McCain is a joke and you can’t tell me that a single one of these bloggers could have distinguished between Larry Craig and Jenny Craig two months ago.

Are in order as I am recently informed that I have come into possession of a new niece. Baby, mother and wide-eyed first-time father are all doing well.

Although the evidence tends to suggest that they were, ultimately, correct:

Peterson told Kegley that he had gone to his ex-girlfriend’s house early Sunday morning in hopes of patching up the relationship after a recent breakup. He said Peterson lost control when an argument erupted and other people started ridiculing him as a “worthless pig.”

Police, who declined to provide details of the argument, said Peterson stormed out, retrieved an AR-15 rifle from his car outside and burst back into the house firing 30 shots that killed all but one of the people at the party.

I suppose one should feel lucky to only get a traffic ticket after calling a police officer a worthless pig. It’s interesting to note that a mass killing by a policeman doesn’t generate the media calls for disarming the police the way that a mass killing by a member of the public does always leads to calls for disarming the public.

I’d much rather that the public was permitted arms and the police were not. You can neither make nor keep the peace with guns, except by defending yourself. The police not only are not interested in defending you, they specifically deny any obligation whatsoever to defend you.

Moreover, courts have repeatedly upheld those denials. Whatever they are doing with those guns, they’re not defending you.

We clearly can’t allow these armed and dangerous individuals to be permitted to carry guns:

An off-duty sheriff’s deputy went on a shooting rampage early Sunday at a home where seven young people had gathered for pizza and movies, killing six and critically injuring the other before authorities fatally shot him, officials said.

The gunman, Tyler Peterson, was 20 years old and worked full-time as a Forest County deputy sheriff and part-time as a Crandon police officer, said Police Chief John Dennee.

This tends to underline the truth of the statement that if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Even if they do wear badges.

Sam Harris reconsiders:

The second reason to be attentive to the differences among the world’s religions is that these differences are actually a matter of life and death. There are very few of us who lie awake at night worrying about the Amish. This is not an accident. While I have no doubt that the Amish are mistreating their children, by not educating them adequately, they are not likely to hijack aircraft and fly them into buildings. But consider how we, as atheists, tend to talk about Islam. Christians often complain that atheists, and the secular world generally, balance every criticism of Muslim extremism with a mention of Christian extremism. The usual approach is to say that they have their jihadists, and we have people who kill abortion doctors. Our Christian neighbors, even the craziest of them, are right to be outraged by this pretense of even-handedness, because the truth is that Islam is quite a bit scarier and more culpable for needless human misery, than Christianity has been for a very, very long time.

Apparently it seems to have recently occurred to Mr. Harris that vehemently attacking the hundreds of millions of people who have pretty much left your tiny, insignificant minority in peace for centuries and are all that stand in between you and tens of millions of people who would like to cut your head off may not be the brightest course of action.

Needless to say, most of those brilliant strategists in the New Atheist movement vehemently disagree with him.

I’ll have a more substantive analysis of this interesting confessional in the next day or two. Harris only begins to touch on a few of the inherent problems with atheism today, but those he touches upon are relevant.

“When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told – religious Jews anyway – than atheists and more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see.”
– Richard Dawkins

Everyone knows that Christopher Hitchens is anti-semitic. But Daniel Finklestein, a left-wing editor at The Times, is appalled to discover that Richard Dawkins appears to be as well.

“So Dawkins, a liberal hero, believes, er, that Jews control world power. And, judging from the Guardian, it is now a part of mainstream debate to say so. Perhaps you think I am over-reacting, but I am a little bit frightened.”

While there would be a good deal of amusement to be engendered by watching liberal atheists’ heads explode from the overload of cognitive dissonance, I think Dawkins must be excused from the charge of anti-semitism by virtue of his near-complete ignorance of world history and foreign policy. He’s merely repeating an opinion that held by many Englishmen and other Europeans.

This should be obvious, as Dawkins clearly has no idea that it’s primarily non-practicing Jews who are the politically influential individuals, both in Israel and the United States.