I'll have to admit, I had not considered that obvious solution (i.e., guilty as charged). The followup is: why not? I don't know, but it shows that habits of mind are extremely hard to break. I will take credit for rolling my eyes at one purported solution; namely, that the accusing girls had ingested ergot fungi and had hallucinations. Hell, just about *any* observation could be explained that way.

I should point out to OJ that at least one of his ancestors in neighboring Andover was accused of witchcraft, though we don't talk about it much at family holiday gatherings.

Frankly the witchcraft trials always smacked to me of the same type of mob hysteria which enabled people like Titus Oates to persecute Catholics or claim that Jews and Freemasons were poisoning the wells.



McCarthy's antics detracted and harmed the cause of anti-communism.



And isn't it commonly accepted now that Hiss was a Soviet spy?

Mr. Judd;



I must say that I fail to see the similarity between witchcraft and Communism, in particular how the former threatens the civil order. The key difference to me is that Communism “works” in the sense that it conquered and destroyed entire nations via the actions of a (relatively) small cadre of true believers. Could you list any equivalent successes for witchcraft? Do you have any evidence that the prosecuted in the Salem Witch Trials were in fact “engaged in a massive conspiracy to subvert the government”?



In a similarly misapt analogy, the Caliphascists have siezed governments and committed major acts of terrorism. I haven't see anything even remotely equivalent out of the Wiccans.



As you allude to and I fully agree, it is not the practice of witchcraft or Communism or radical Islam per se
which is objectionable, but that such practices threaten the civil order, i.e. make the Constitution a “suicide pact”. By this criteria witchcraft is not objectionable and I've never seen any factual evidence that it might be so in the future.

AOG:



Witchcraft denies the very bases of the Puritan social order http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1189
):



"Superficially Puritanism was only a belief that the Church of England should be purged of its hierarchy and of the traditions and ceremonies inherited from Rome. But those who had caught the fever knew that Puritanism demanded more of the individual than it did of the church. Once it took possession of a man, it was seldom shaken off and would shape--some people would say warp--his whole life. Puritanism was a power not to be denied. It did great things for England and America, but only by creating in the men and women it affected a tension which was at best painful and at worst unbearable. Puritanism required that a man devote his life to seeking salvation but told him he was helpless to do anything but evil. Puritanism required that he rest his whole hope in Christ but taught him that Christ would utterly reject him unless before he was born God had foreordained his salvation. Puritanism required that man refrain from sin but told him he would sin anyhow. Puritanism required that he reform the world in the image of God's holy kingdom but taught him that the evil of the world was incurable and inevitable. Puritanism required that he work to the best of his ability at whatever task was set before him and partake of the good things that God had filled the world with but told him he must enjoy his work and his pleasures only, as it were, absent-mindedly, with his attention fixed on God."



And there's no reason Wicca should be protected by the 1st Amendment for the same reason.

In any case, I'll gladly take charges of hysteria along with a functioning America and an assimilated Muslim population in 50 years.

OB:



If we had a dollar for every Judd who ended up locked in an attic to prevent the family embarassment, we could both quit our jobs.

Ali:



When nominated for the CIA job in the 90's, Tony Lake could not bring himself, on Meet the Press, to acknowledge that Hiss was a spy.

oj: In any case hanging seems a bit too much of a punishment for women who were experimenting with herbs and indulging in nature worship.



It's not like they were plotting to poison wells or assassinate people like John Winthrop.

Some on the Left who may accept (not say) that Hiss was a spy see him as a victim of the era. As such, he's an object of sympathy and more to be pitied than anything else.

Others still defend him, partly out of willful ignorance, partly due to a refusal to accept they might ever have been wrong. Tony Lake knew such people were watching MTP and he likely didn't want to offend them.

Political correctness at its most perverse.

My parents had an old book, "Old Tales and Legends of The New England Border". It interested my father, he being from Norwich, CT. It included some of the exploits of Lion Gardiner, whose family must be the oldest money in North America these days.

I found one characteristic of the book interesting. The earlier stories identified practically every other man by his militia rank. It was Lieutenant Smith and Sergeant Jones on and on.

We do not, these days, talk about Lieutenant Smith if he's our neighbor and in the National Guard, unless somebody asks what our neighbor's rank in the Guard is.

In other words, the militia and its members were important, and there is a reason for that, which is to say a constant awareness of the threat.

I think the Indian war theory is supportable.

Of course Alger Hiss was guilty of collaboration with the soviets. The refusal of certain types to acknowlege it is due to the importance of the period in transforming the U.S. into the highly centralized leviathan it has become. Hiss as well as many important New Dealers were either direct supporters of the stalinist paradise or actual spies. This was a key period of triumph for most modern "liberals". To accept as dominant the influence of the American supporters of Stalin and his government on the New Deal says what about them and their program?

"One of the strangest things about the Salem Witch Trials is that the most obvious explanation is ignored: the prosecuted practiced witchcraft."



It's plausible that a few of the initially accused practiced witchcraft, but towards the end accusers were naming practically anyone, including the Governor's wife. Since almost all the evidence presented in court consisted of confessions, made by those who knew a confession could spare them the gallows, and "spectral evidence," submitted by those who believed themselves to be tomented by witches, we'll never know if any of the accused were truly guilty.



Interestingly, after the trials the people of Salem believed that the Devil was still among them, but that he had deluded them into believing that innocents were witches.

Actually, the Devil tricked them into believing that.

Your agrument fails, Orrin, because a man did

not have to attempt witchcraft in order to be

burned at the stake. Under the Del Rio doctrine,

it was a burning offense to ask whether there

were such things as witches, and many

people were so burned.



If you believe in liberty of any kind, you can't

go around burning all your skeptics or you

will have to go back to sitting around the campfire

dividing a johnnycake 15 ways.



Miller missed the story and so did Orrin. Judge

Sewall recanted his judgment and begged

forgiveness from the entity Orrin fantasizes

that Sewall was defending. That doesn't

make any sense.

You needn't burn all the skeptics, only those whose views are antithetical to the society.

Are the ayatollahs of Iran, then, right to burn those whose views are antithetical to their Islamic society?

The ayatollahs would seem to be in the minority, rather than representatives of a widely shared vision of what kind of society Iran should have.

It would seem, then, that executions should be ordered only by a jury of all members of society, not just a jury of twelve, who may be unrepresentative.

You could make a very good argument that

the Church's witchcraft doctrines, like its

physical doctrines, were antithetical to any

sort of decent society.



It was only when the skeptics defanged the

church that the West rose up out of the

terror of Christianity and starting working

out a way to construct a successful society.



You could make a graph showing the

relationship between the power of the churches

and the amount of fortification in private homes.



Very revealing.

Harry:



In what sense is today's society better than that of Old New England?

Harry - I see your point - when the churches were powerful people lived in thatch huts, but now that churches are weak we buy security services and lock our doors. Very revealing.

No, you don't see my point. People lived in

fortresses when religion was in the saddle.

Now we live in open houses. You may lock

your door, but I don't.



Orrin, I suppose one way in which today is

better than Old New England, is that in Old

New England I would not be allowed to

express my opinions. Or act on them.



I know you think people had more liberty in

the old days, but that's fantasy.