"By any conceivable measure, the 20th century has truly been the greatest century of human progress in history."

Several hundred million victims might have a slightly different take.

Although it's true that astounding numbers of people died through totalitarian violence in the 20th century, warfare has been with us since the first time some tribe tried to monopolize the watering hole.
Further, in percentage terms, far, far more people died of plague during Europe's epidemics in 1347 - 1350, and the Spanish flu of 1918 - 1919 killed tens of millions worldwide, somewhere between 20 and 40 million.
Thus, even after acknowledging the terrible toll that warfare caused in the 20th century, it's still a big deal when we can stop the type of pandemics that cut such wide swaths in the past.

Regarding Easterbrook's commentary, at the end, where he speaks of the need to find ways to slow the rat race: Isn't that, in part, what we were discussing the other day ?
Educated women choosing not to work, so that they can spend more time with their kids, seems less stressful than the "dink" trend of the 90s.
Even if there's stress involved in getting by on one income, if both partners are educated and able to work, it should reduce some anxiety surrounding the possibility of losing a job, since there's double the chance of replacing that income.

Mr. Herdegen:

It is obtuse, almost to the point of obscenity, to compare deaths by flu or biological plague to deaths by deliberate mass murder as an instrument of state policy.

The twentieth century, despite all its material achievements, was also the century of the death camp. And, as Whittaker Chambers put it, the century of treason.

Other ages have had their individual traitors —- men who from faint-heartedness or hope of gain sold out their causes. But in the 20th century, for the first time, man banded together by millions, in movements like Fascism and Communism, dedicated to the purpose of betraying the institutions they lived under. In the 20th century, treason became a vocation whose modern form was specifically the treason of ideas.

Michael:

"Thus, even after acknowledging the terrible toll that warfare caused in the 20th century, it's still a big deal when we can stop the type of pandemics that cut such wide swaths in the past."

You seem to acknowledge that the two are linked. Wise of you. That is is dilemna of our age, and I do not know what the answer is. But if all the wonders that so excite the Cato Institute are teamed with a propensity to murder in unprecented numbers, I'll hold on the champagne.

Paul:

It's disturbing to realize that you could substitute "the gay rights movement" for "Fascism and Communism" in that sentence, since they too seek to destroy our institutions.

Paul:

Deaths are deaths. Including man's 20th century industrial killing, there has been huge progress in humanity's material existence in the 20th century.

So when Peter says "Several hundred million victims might have a slightly different take," that deserves to be balanced against all the non-victims of bacterial infection thanks to antibiotics.

So, even assuming there is a link between rational inquiry and murderous totalitarian orthodoxies (hard to claim, because the latter have been around far longer than the former), it is intellectually dishonest to neglect all those who were able to live out their three score and seven due to rational inquiry's results.

Yes, but not all totalitarian regimes are murderous, while all rationalist ones have been.

Jeff:

What are you saying, that the Holocaust is redeemed because antibiotic developments during the war prevented another global plague?

Fascism and Communism were hardly treason.

It's very easy to look back on failure, and claim that the failure was easily predictable.

In fact, they were merely social experiments, as humans struggle to find the optimal way to live.
There was a time when democracy was such an experiment, and for most of human history, a seemingly failed one.

Peter B:

They aren't at all linked.

Genocide is hardly a 20th century invention.

Michael:

That's inane. Communism and Fascism may be attractive alternatives to democracy but in being alternative they are by definition anti-democratic and treasonous towards a democratic regime.

Michael:

Who invented it?

I'm guessing the same guy who invented the sharpened stick.

Michael:

"they were merely social experiments, as humans struggle to find the optimal way to live."

Not all humans. Many figured that out a long time ago. And doesn't that statement link inexorably what you say is not linked?

Can you provide an example of pre-20th century genocide? A rational, systematic attempt to eradicate a race or nation

I think that the article was focusing more narrowly on the life experience of Americans in the 20th century. Without getting into the genocide debate, it is true that we Americans are materially better off than we were 100 years ago. The problem is, happiness is measure of your blessings divided by your expectations. IF the latter increases faster than the former, your happiness will decrease.

Material wants are inherently insatiable. The one advantage that my parent's generation had over mine (Baby Boomer) is lower expectations. They had no concept of "self-fulfillment" or "self-actualization", two terms that I would equate to "self-gratification". We came of age with this grand ideal that we would change the world, we would find careers that would never be dull or repetetive, but that would tap into our uniqueness and creativity.

My father's advice while I was in college searching for such a career was "all work is boring, that's why they call it work. Get something that pays well. You can be a bored engineer making $30,000 (1978 dollars) or a bored carpenter making $12,000."

The older I get, the more wisdom I see in his attitude. The less that you expect from work in terms of personal fulfillment, the more satisfied you will be in what you actually accomplish. It is what you work for (providing for a family) that gives work meaning, not what you do.

Curious, Robert. I told my kids exactly the opposite. My view was that the job you train for may disappear before you're ready, and you may end up doing something that is not only boring but ill-paid. So you may as well do something you like and hope for the best.

Thanks to people like Orrin, the first part of my prediction is coming true for tens of millions of people in America.

I'm amused to report that my kids all pursued their hobbies as careers, and while I would have thought that they would have ended up practically unemployable, they're all making way more than I do.

Predicting the future is a mug's game.

As for treason, I don't know how you can be a traitor to something to that does exist. American Communists -- at least the card carrying kind -- were traitors, but about 99% of traitors were Russian or Chinese, and they could not have been traitors to democracy, though they were to tsarism or warlordism. So would I have been, given a chance.

Yes, but the tsar and Chiang were preferable by every measure.

Peter B:

Carthage (by the Romans). The Mongol destruction of the Assassins in the 12th? century. Pretty much anybody the Aztecs ran into before the Spaniards. Are you really claiming that's new or even exceptional?

And for that matter, the Neanderthals sure disappeared awfully fast once the Cromagnons showed up...

Carthage was a city. The Assassins a sect. There was no attempt to systematically destroy another race of people for their race until Darwin revealed the importance of one race surviving another.

Technology makes human evil more efficient, while science only ever confirms our prejudices.

Yeah, the Turks killed the Armenians because they (the Turks) were such Darwinists.

(Apologize for my previous, incoherent post. Got my tang tongled up.)

I made a little list of 20th century megaatrocities.

If they have a common thread, I couldn't say what it is, but it could not possibly be Darwinism:

Turks v. Kurds, Bulgarians, Armenians, Greeks

Russians (Bolsheviks) v. Russians (Bolsheviks) and everybody else

Chinese (Reds) v. Chinese

West Pakistanis v. E. Pakistanis

Germans v. Jews and just about everybody

Vietnamese v. everybody

Cambodians v. Cambodians

Spaniards v. Spaniards

Tutsis v. Hutus

Hutus v. Tutsis

Japanese v. Koreans, Indonesians and just about everybody

Going back only a little, we get Zulus v. Bantus etc.

At least a majority of these exterminations were intramural or by people never hitherto suspected of even knowing what Darwinism was.

Every crime committed by the Nazis or the Communists was committed earlier by Christians. The justification for Nazi crimes against Jews was pure Lutheranism.

Repeatedly saying "Darwin did it!" does not convince, especially since the places with the most Darwinists did the least slaughtering.

Harry:

(1) There's no such thing as intramural genocide. But you're right, folks do like killing one another.

(2) You can search Mein Kampf from cover to cover and find no Lutheranism, but much biology.

(3) Given (1), (2) is predictable. Hardly surprising that science is just one more reason for slaughter.

Mike/Harry:

We seem to be getting a little into a "your slaughters were worse than our slaughters" argument. Edifying.

Genocide, although not a precise term, is not a synonym for slaughter or pillage or bloodlust or civil war. What is distinctly modern is the notion that a particular nation, faith, class, etc. must be eradicated as part of the conscious, premeditated designing of a better society. It can be chillingly systematic like the Holocaust or an out-of -control madness like Pol Pot. But it implies a notion that eradication is being undertaken in response to abstract ideological ends as opposed to an exaggerated external threat. (Tests: Is it promoted and undertaken in peacetime, is there any room for survivors, and is it executed beyond the spending of the passions of rage, fear and revenge). Nobody is pointing fingers at Darwin in particular or even scientists generally. It is a function of a combination of modern rationality and moral relativism.

It hasn't happened in the Anglosphere or most of Europe because those countries' political cultures still have underlying values that prevent it. The source of those values is a rare and precious combination of religion and the enlightenment. It is not modern religionists who want one of the elements of that mix or completely marginalized, it is secularists.

Peter:

In respose to way up there somewhere: No. A Paul Cella had used illogical reasoning, in that he failed to account for the things that didn't happen, as well as those that did.

"What is distinctly modern is the notion that a particular nation, faith, class, etc. must be eradicated as part of the conscious, premeditated designing of a better society."

What of the Albigensian heresy? There was apparently quite a bit of slaughter in early Christianity sparked by various conceptions of the Holy Trinity.

Had the Spanish Inquisition access to industrial methods, do you doubt it would have killed the Jews en masse rather than banish them?

Those who throw up the Darwinism bogeyman need to demonstrate that Communism and Nazism would not have happened in Darwin's absence.

"It hasn't happened in the Anglosphere or most of Europe because those countries' political cultures still have underlying values that prevent it."

You're forgetting about the eradication of the Tasmanian aborigines. Wiped out to the last man by Australian whites.

All aboriginal peoples met not dissimilar ends, but that was mostly just a land dispute.

Jeff:

Speaking of illogic, it';s nmow yyour argument that there was slkaughter but there couldn;'t be because of technology restraints that it was religious rather than racial, proving it wasn't genocidal, and that Hitler, who explicitly based Nazism on Darwinism would have invented it himself or something?

Speaking of illogic: post hoc ergo propter hoc, which, in this regard, is pretty much where you hang your hat.

Speaking of religion: Islamists, who have utterly no truck with Darwin, would quite happily slaughter everyone else if only the means were available.

Based upon what, precisely, do you conclude that Nazism is any different then the Inquisition? One had the fruits of the industrial revolution at its disposal, the other didn't. The former could engage in mass slaughter to achieve its absolutist ends, the other had to rely on mass expulsion.

The Inquisition, in terms of its goals, was more successful than Nazism.

Jeff:

As a Christian it is no skin off my nose if you, or any heretic, go to Hell. Therefore your mere existence is unexceptionable.

However, when applying Darwinism it is obviously a threat if any other group of humans other than those with which you are most similar genetically continues to exist. Because you can't all be equally likely to survive. Therefore extermination becomes necessary.

OJ:

Apparently the Inquisition was ahead of its time, having predated Darwinism by four centuries. Its goals were exterminationist, but lacked the means.

No, it was racialist, but not exterminationist. But you are on to something, that it was a function of the secular state rather than religious issues.

Jeff:

"A Paul Cella had used illogical reasoning, in that he failed to account for the things that didn't happen, as well as those that did."

Well then, here is a toast to A Paul Cella. Jeff, that is mendacious nonsense and close to pure Leninism. What evils that didn't happen are you using to justify the ones that did?

"Had the Spanish Inquisition access to industrial methods, do you doubt it would have killed the Jews en masse rather than banish them?"

Of course I doubt. Do you imagine they didn't know how to murder in large numbers?

What is with this attraction to the Albigensian heresy? I am baffled at your determined defence of the Albigensians, witches and the Aztecs. I'd love to see what you would say if they all returned and maked a collective play for power over the Dearborn municipal authorities.

Robert:

You are right about the Tasmanians, which is why the Church conceived and developed aboriginal rights and fought local settlers everywhere in the aboriginal world. Morality must sometimes stand in opposition to the pragmatic and profitiable. Did you think that all started with Joan Baez?

Peter:

Justification wasn't part of the article. Paul made it so. But at least if he was, he needed to include the whole picture. If you are going to tally the costs of Nazism and Communism in the rationalism balance sheet, then one had better tally the credits of anti-biotics, etc.

Yes, they knew how to murder in large numbers. But to pursue exterminationist ends pre Industrial Revolution, mass expulsion was the only game in town. The Spanish Inquisition had exterminationist goals, and they pursued it with the only means available. Given the number of people they managed to murder with the means at hand, it begs credulity they would have stopped there had there grasp been equal to their reach.

That they murdered so few is proof they would have murdered more?

So few? You think those who left with nothing but the shirts on their backs hightailed it because of the Inquisition's restraint with the butcher's bill?

I think you've been reading too many atheist tracts.

Orrin's fantasy that the Inquisition was secular is contradicted by the fact that the Aragonese people and government fought the establishment of the Inquisition on their territory. Actually fought, with bloodshed.

It was religious. Once we get past that, perhaps we could discuss its methods and effects.

Do we detect a note of special pleading here, again and again? If anyone adduces a mass slaughter in the name of religion, Peter and Orrin can be relied on to say, it was for religion. Even if the killers professed to be killing in the name of god.

I have often used the example of the hundred thousand skulls of Samarkand, to take the issue out of the emotional realm of Christianity.

Religion has been a greater motivation to slaughter than any other factor in history, even greed.

It is true that with a few exceptions like Germany, states that adopted a mixed secular/religious culture have for the most part avoided the slaughters that were continual in prescientific days.

I cannot think of any instance in which secularists who held civil power killed people for purely for mere opinion. And I cannot think of any religion that held civil power that has not.

OJ:

I don't read any atheist tracts.

I have, however, recently read some books having to do with the triumph of the west. Both of them consider Christianity a significant factor in that triumph.

Both of them are scathing about the causes and effects of the Inquisition.

Harry has noted before that a strictly secular government and a freely religious polity is a combination that has singularly tamed history's pantheon of religiously inspired slaughter.

It is a point worthy of taking on board.

Harry:

No, that proves its secularity, the attempt to tighten central control by the King and Queen in a previously fragmented land.

Interestingly, despite Jeff's hopefully inaccurate reading of Landes, Spain's rise to great power status coincided precisely with its period of intolerance.

Jeff:

A few thousand Christians were killed in Spain, on charges (largely dubious) of heresy, no Jews.

The Albigensians did get crushed, but they were the Communists of their day. Such a major heresy had to be put down.

"I cannot think of any instance in which secularists who held civil power killed people for purely for mere opinion."

Yours is a simple faith, isn't it.

I think it's also the case that 'genocide' per se is something of a 20th century phenomenum for a couple of reasons:

+ Distinction between nation and race tend to be made more clearly now.
+ With the advent of industrailization, there's no point in enslavement of captives.

I think Orrin overstated his case in the post but had it right in the comments; people tend to split into sub-groups and slaughter each other, and science is as good an excuse to make a split as any.

(And if that doesn't work, we can always get a machine that sticks stars on our bellies...)

Hopefully inaccurate reading of Landes? The actual quotes are quite scathing.

You forget the conversos, and deny the deaths of thousands of Jews.

Jeff:

Well then Landes is to blame more than you. The argument that intolerance caused the decline of Spain os idiotic on its face, since it only became great, in fact only became a unified and free nation, while being intolerant.

The conversos were, of course, Christians rather than Jews. If Landes can't get even that right then you'd better try another guru.

>Hardly surprising that science is just one more
>reason for slaughter.

Because "Men of Sin" will quote any cosmic-level authority -- Bible, Koran, Darwin, Marx, Science, Nature, whatever -- to justify what they wanted to do and were going to do anyway.

That's what it comes down to. Men of Sin claiming Divine Right.

Civil power: of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, secularists all. And if they weren't secular, what religion were they?

OJ:

Wrong on the facts. Spain and Portugals rapid decline came about after the Inquisition, because both countries succeeded so completely in driving out so much talent. In addition, the fanatical emphasis on orthodoxy, and the Church's vetting of all printed materials put innovation in the grave for a couple centuries.

Landes clearly and accurately conveyed the predicament of the conversos. Being Christian wasn't enough to save them from religious totalitarianism.

In the realm of human affairs, one is scarcely able to find a more concrete example of cause and effect.

Proof positive, as if more were needed, that one should pick one's enemies with at least as much care as picking ones friends. It is best to have a reason.

Ratbert:
Take a look at what characterizes religious belief, then look at Communism and Nazism. Many, if not most historians view them as non-theistic religions.

Jeff:

That's just moronic. There was no Spain until the year the Moors were defeated and the Jews were expelled.

Ferdinand & Isabella - Spain's Unity (Miriam Ho)

In 1469, Isabella of Castile, sister to the King of Castile married Ferdinand of Aragon, heir to the throne of Aragon, in a celebration that was "furtively arranged and incongruously celebrated." Their union, representing the union of Aragon and Castile, is often seen as a symbol of the union of Spain and their reign (up till 1515 - with the death of Ferdinand) the foundation of Spain as a united country and the head of a large empire. The extent to which their union and their reigns united Spain can be assessed on the basis of their religious, foreign, economic and administrative actions in both Aragon and Castile. However, one should note that despite the union of their persons, the bonds of union between Aragon and Castile were very tenuous during their reign; in fact, the two only gained a united constitution in 1715, two centuries after their reign. This is an indication of the limited extent of unity in Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella.

It could be said that it was in the religious sphere that the Catholic Kings (ie. Ferdinand and Isabella) created some genuine unity. Their successful reconquest of Granada from the Muslim Moors in 1492 as well as their expulsion of the Jews in that same year created a religious uniformity, especially with the forced conversion of the Moors.

Note the date from which the world's leading authority on Spanish history dates its greatness: Empire : How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763 (Henry Kamen)

There are plenty of reasons for you to hate Christianity and religious intolerance, but the effect of both on Spain is the precise opposite of what you imagine.

http://brothersjuddblog.com/archives/008268.html

So, given all of these historic examples of vile behavior, are we then agreed that the 20th century was, in fact, the best and greatest century so far ?

It's fifth of the last five.

"When the Portuguese conquered the South Atlantic, they were in the van of navigational technique. A readiness to learn from foreign savants, many Jewish, had brought knowledge ... directly into application.

But in 1497, pressure from the Roman Church and Spain led the Portuguese crown to abandon this tolerance. Some 70,000 Jews were forced into a bogus but nevertheless sacramentally valid baptism. In 1506, Lisbon saw its first pogrom, which left 2,000 'converted' Jews dead. From then on, the intellectual and scientific life of Portugal descended into an abyss of bigotry, fanaticism, and purity of blood.

The Portuguese Inquisition ... burned its first heretic in 1543; but it did not become grimly unrelenting intil the 1580s, after the union of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns...

By 1513 Portugal wanted for astronomers; by the 1520s, scientific leadership was gone.

As far as Spain goes:

In 1558, the death penalty was introduced for importing foreign books without permission. Among books on [the Index Prohibitorum]: scientfic works banned because their authors were Protestant.

Persecution led to an interminable "witch hunt", complete with paid snitches, prying neighbors and a racist blood mania.

The British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper has argued that this reactionary, anti-Protestant backlash ... sealed the fate of Southern Europe for the next three hundred years.

Compare the late industrial development of Mediterranean Europe, in particular of Italy, Spain and Portugal. All of these were hurt by religious intolerance...

... Iberia particularly wanted for enterprise and skills, including the ability to read. These failings went back centuries--to religious zealotry and Counter-Reformation cultivation of ignorance.

The religious persecutions of old--the massacres, hunts, expulsions, forced conversions--proved to be a kind of orginal sin. Their effects would not wear off until the 20th Century . . . and not always then.

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, pp 133-6; 180; 249-250

There's more. I just got tired of typing.

You aren't by any chance an Inquisition Denier, are you?

The Inquisition's formal justification for killing the conversos was that they were secretly practicing Jewish rites.

You cannot have it both ways. Either they were killed for being racially Jews (Kamen's original position, which he modified later), or they were killed for being heretics.

Either way condemns the religion that killed them. Even if the church was merely pandering to the worst desires of the Old Christians, that's a bad a reason for murdering innocent people as I can think of -- and no different than Stalin.

Spain's period of unity began with Ferdinand and Isabella. Its period of power began much earlier, since Aragon was already conquering an empire (Balearics, Sicily etc.) even before Iberia was cleared of Moors.

The expulsion of the Moors ruined Grenada's prosperity (as it had earlier in Sicily), since the Moors were the heirs of Late Classical agricultural technique, and the Visigoths knew little about farming.

The expulsion of the Moors and the Jews condemned Spain to impotence and misery. The period of its power resulted from dynastic alliances and the tercio, neither of which depended on either religion or intolerance.

If, as Orrin would have it, the period of power began in 1492, it didn't last long. By 1560 Spain had run through the gold of the Indies and was dependent on the silver it collected from the Austrian Netherlands.

In order to control that income, it had to murder the Protestants and bring in the Netherlands Inquisition, less famous but equally murderous as the Spanish one.

Orrin would do better to claim a secular motive for the Netherlandish Inquisition, although then he would have to admit that the Church had joined in mass murder merely for money.

It's pretty hard to justify an Inquisition. Much easier to take the side that deplores it.

Yes, of course, it was rather minor, quite popular and coincided with Spain's rise to great power. Even Landes there concedes that the decline of the "late industrial period" came after three centuries of intolerant rise. Toleration seems to have had nothing to do with it. What was fatal was finding silver and gold--they became an early version of a petrostate.

Harry:

There's nothing wrong with killing heretics--heresy is a choice. Killing people for their race, which is immutable, is wrong. But it's easy to see why applied Darwinism requires it,

That's what the Sanhedrin thought.

Yes, they did only what they had to do.

And one defines a heretic how?

By challenging existing political power. Which makes the Church's justification of killing "heretics" no better than Stalin's killing of Kulaks.

The Albigensians had just as much Biblical justification as the Church.

Jeff:

Yes, that's exactly right. If you're pro-Stalin then the kulaks had to go.

The problems with Orrin's defense of killing heretics are several, but in the Spanish case they include:

1) that the Inquisition killed by recreant conversos and sincere Catholic conversos, as it could not distinguish among them

2) the definition of heretic varied, leading to social instability, since no one knew whether he was committing a capital offense or not.

3) the heretics were the most valuable sector of the society, and by eliminating instead of conciliating them, the society ruined itself.

The conventional historical assessment is that New World silver destroyed Spanish industry, so it's correct to compare it to a petrostate.

That, in itself, might not have been so bad in the 16th century, when state power did not necessarily depend on industry. For Spain, the problem was that silver propped up the arrogance of the ricos hombres and the prelates, and even in a preindustrial age, that was fatal to the state.

It created social instability? It occurred while Spain was becoming a unified state and a great empire--which it remained for centuries.

As to the silver you demonstrate rare wisdom.

OJ:

There is a difference between a large, and a great, empire.

The legacy of social instability lasted centuries.

The Spanish empire was, as Harry noted, probably the first "petrostate." It reliance on gold, then silver, ensured an empovershed legacy.

Jeff:

No, I pointed it out, because that was the inherent weakness of the empire, not intolerance. If Landes didn't figure it out though then he sounds totally useless. Spain's Empire was both large and great and was created after the Inquisition had begun and, by definition, after they drove out the Moors, effectively refuting your absurd theory.

If the measure of a great empire is that it succeeds with its foreign policies, then Spain's was never great.

The Spaniards dealt easily enough with the Stone Age New World but had a hard time managing it afterward.

But what else. Let's say, with Orrin, that the empire started in 1492. In the 15th century, Spain's assaults on North Africa and England failed. It lost half of the Low Countries. Although it contributed to the victory at Lepanto, that victory was notoriously inconsequential, and Spain's enemies shortly controlled the Mediterranean. The eastern coast of Spain (now the Cote d'Azur and full of vacation condos) was depopulated to a depth of 10 miles because the government could not prevent Algerian slave raids.

It was the period of the Empire's alleged greatest strength that two orders of monks had to be organized for the sole purpose of ransoming Christian slaves from the Arabs.

Spain was able to meddle in the French religious wars, to no lasting benefit to itself.

The only place where its power was decisive was Italy, but that predated the Reconquista.

It was a hollow empire, ungovernable in part because religious bigotry forced the government to destroy all the most prosperous parts of it.

It kept the Phillipines, Cuba, etc., etc., etc.

But are you two really contending that intolerance was not a significant enough problem to inhibit the rise, while that intolerance was at its greatest, but then simmered beneath the surface for four centuries of global empire before breaking through and toppling the empire?

Meanwhile, Britain, despite its expulsion of the Jews rose to even greater empire status.

And, America, built on slavery and Jim Crow rose still further.

Are you both off your meds?

Slaves, (and blacks in general, before the 20th century), were never a significant part of America's productivity, either economic or intellectual.

If Americans had never owned slaves, cotton wouldn't have been king in the south, but there are other crops, easier to harvest.

Which makes enslaving them even more of a drag, no? Yet it worked. It would appear tolerance has nothing to do with it.

OJ:

I'm wondering about your extremely selective reading of history.

Landes describes the economic consequences of the Inquisition. They were huge. Between exiling or killing talent, and the inevitable suppression of creativity that goes along with totalitarian orthodoxy, Spain paid for its sins over centuries. Its empire was like a trust fund child, living off gold.

What greatness has the Spanish empire bequeathed us?

No country in Europe was kind to Jews--as good an argument against organized religion as one is likely to find. But England was less ruthless in its treatment of Jews, and hurt itself less thereby.

Jeff:

Selective? Because I disagree with Landes when he--or your misreading of him--is so obviously wrong?

Try reading someoneone who knows something about the Inquisition (B. Netanyahu) or Spain (Henry Kamen).

Spain wasn't particularly intolerant (in fact its Empire was an effort of much of Europe, blacks, and natives), rose from poverty to wealth during the Inquisition, and fared better than most of its European cousins even through the 20th Century and up to now.

Perhaps you should actually read him before deciding he is so obviously wrong.

In particular, your notion of Spain faring better than most of its European cousins even through the 20th century is wrong on the facts. I left off the fact that illiteracy rates in countries that suffered the worst of the Inquisition far outstripped all other countries. Up through the 20th century. That's what will happen if learning the wrong thing, or reading the wrong book, can be a capital crime.

The knock-on effects of the Inquisition and Counter-Reformation don't go away simply because you don't like the explanation.

Literacy rates are the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Brave words for an Inquisition Denier.

I don't deny it--I approve of it.