Re: Larry Niven: Terrorize Latinos to Solve Health Care Crisis

On Mon, 05 May 2008 10:03:52 -0700, David Friedman wrote:

> In article <Q_adnblHz_3Bq4LVnZ2dnUVZ_qqgnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>  mimus <tinmimus99@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
>> I tend to blame the Christian Conquest of the Roman Empire, via a
campaign
>> of urban mob-violence, with its burnings of libraries, destructions of
the
>> philosophical schools, murders of the philosophers, and in the end
>> outright and continuing warfare against non-priestly (and, later,
>> non-Gothic-aristocratic) literacy and non-Christian literature in
general,
>> myself.
> 
> Could you provide some references to support that description? I thought

> I remembered a Christian conquest that occurred via the conversion of 
> the Emperor.

There was a reason Constantine (somewhat tentatively at first) allied
himself with them.

But try this time-line from his reign on:

http://www.stopthereligiousright.org/demolish.htm

This time-line ignores the earlier drive to power via mob-actions and
desultory and ineffective attempts of the Roman Empire to deal with
them that made the Christians just the allies Constantine and his mother
wanted, and was compiled by a writer who seems to be a "philosophical
Hellenist", someone who adheres to and promulgates a sort of philosophical
euhemeristic approach to the classic Hellenic mythology, which makes him
something of a loonie too in my book, but at least it puts him on the
right side vis-a-vis the Christian Conquest.

Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ covers some of this, too, although you have to
read between the lines a bit, since he could've been sent to prison for
over-explicitness.

There are various accounts in the collection called _The Fathers of the
Church_ which brag about mob-campaigns against the polytheists.

Gregory of Tours is remarkably and explicitly discreet in his _History of
the Franks_ about what led up to the "Great Persecution" of the Christians
under Diocletian, in stark and revealing contrast to his voluble glee over
the (admittedly lurid) goings-on among the Frankish aristocracy, although
he does also gloat over "heretical" Church leaders being poisoned
("expelling their bowels") on various occasions.

And, BTW, the "pagans" were the inhabitants of the _pagani_, the rural
districts of the Italian peninsula, who were of course the last
polytheistic hold-outs against the urban mob-violence of Christianity, and
thus the targets of considerable Christian venom, right down to the
present day, which gives you some idea of the domineering hatred involved
(similarly with the "heathens", the rural polytheists of the "heath").

-- 

And now the saints began their reign,
For which th' had yearned so long in vain,
And felt such bowel-hankerings,
To see an empire, all of kings,
Delivered from th' Egyptian awe
Of justice, government and law.

< _Hudibras_