Pope Benedict Speaks

Now that the pope has gone on the record as being wary of a tendency to violence in the Islamic religion, (this is too wearisome an argument to refute particularly from the leader of a church that has conquered with the sword throughout its history), the floodgates are open to all those heretofore closet Muslim haters to fully express themselves. Everyone from Oriana Fallaci to Spain's Jose Maria Aznar is going into print to profess their long held (and up until now apparently politely repressed) opinion about the evils inherent in Islam. It is more and more looking like we had the existence of the Soviet Union to thank for keeping historical discourse even a little bit rational and not descending into the kind of primitive tribalism we are now seeing. If this is how the anti-communist white European bourgeoisie behaves when it feels it is free from the excoriation of historical materialists, I say bring back the good old days. I will always recall R.W. Apple, writing (on the front page of the Times no less) that the events of 1989 were the most significant in world history since the revolutions of 1848. Of course, the Times would revisit the attempt at historical perspective when it allowed its front page to be used as a forum for the unique perspective of Alexander Solzhenitsyn who observed that, no, we had to go back even earlier, to the French Revolution of 1789. (It is now clear that liberte, fraternite and egalite are mutually exclusive argued the Russian seer.) Well, it now seems clear that both men were too conservative in their analyses. Based on the behavior of the Europeans and their evil spawn in the "new" world, it appears we need to go way back, maybe pre-enlightenment, maybe even pre-Islamic influence. Oh, yes, have we forgotten that old standby of college history courses, the Pierenne thesis, which argues that there would be no Western civilization without the influence of Islam? Yes, it seems now that the post-modernists and the neo-conservatives (born again as neo-liberals) have taken over the printing presses of the power structure, we are free to paint ourselves blue and really have at one another.