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A
Reader Ponders Pat and Population
A Protestant Professor Ponders Pope Jonah
From:
Professor Christian Kopff, Boulder CO
Congratulations to Paul Gottfried
for his piece on Pope Jonah.
Traditionally a true prophet is known by the fulfillment
of his vaticinations and the day before the piece
appeared (and, naturally, some time after it was
written) National Review Online published Jonah
Goldberg’s article
“Islamic Rites: Why Muslims Need a
Pope.”
This article is important for a number of reasons.
- As I said, it proves that Paul
Gottfried is a true prophet. (He should not expect to
be treated better than Jeremiah was by the pro-war
establishment of his day.)
- Goldberg’s article explicitly
equates Muslims with Protestants, who also need a
Pope. It culminates in several paragraphs attacking
Martin Luther. “He was more anti-Semitic than the
Catholic church.” He was responsible for the
destruction of art in Switzerland and Protestant
opposition to science (exemplified by the Amish, the
Shakers and the Puritans). Because of Luther,
“Protestants adopted the practice [of burning
heretics] wholesale.”
- Goldberg frames this list of
half-truths and bald-faced lies by two significant
sentences.
“By
almost every definition of the Left today – to the
extent such definitions are applicable – the Protestant
reformation and revolts were conservative
events…. But reformers without restraint are not
reformers, they’re radicals.”
Luther was
both conservative (I agree here) and radical. The
objection to both shows the pink panties of Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr.’s Vital Center liberalism under the
Neo-Conservative miniskirt. “Conservatism” for the NRO
crowd means defending the Roosevelt regime and it no
longer disguises its contempt for the average American
conservative, two-thirds of whom are Protestants.
- This professional “defender of
the West” has never heard of Albrecht Dürer or Hans
Holbein in art, of Bach or Haydn or Luther himself in
music, of Tycho Brahe or Kepler or Linnaeus in
science. It is not just the ignorance, however; it is
the animus. Goldberg did not make this up himself.
This is the way he hears the East Coast Neo-Coms and
Neo-Thoms talk about Protestant America and its
traditions.
April 11, 2002
