Was the hammer bit a pun?

But of course.

Orrin, I thought you were making a reference to The Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches Hammer).

was.

What rubbish. As Benjamin Franklin noted, "vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue; and the scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall be examined not on what we thought but on what we did; and our recommendation will be that we did good to our fellow creatures."

If a silly old woman sticks pins into a wax doll and melts it over a fire while muttering the Lord's Prayer backwards, she does harm to no one except herself. Courts that haul out such demented creatures for trial while far more serious offenders afflict their fellow-creatures go scot-free are guilty of frivolity at the very least.

And that doesn't even take into consideration the number of trials in which the defendants were convicted by patently trumped-up evidence. Many so-called "witches" were, in fact, no more inclined to practice black magic than the people who stood in judgment over them. Time and again we read of people who had no idea of what their accusers were talking about and who were simply bewildered by the charges brought against them, of confessions induced by torture and by sheer weariness on the part of the accused, and of judges deliberately inciting popular hysteria instead of trying to contain it.

The Salem trials are fairly representative in this respect. The accusers were silly and credulous young women prone to hysteria. The story that some of them turned to prostitution after the episode was over may have been wishful thinking; but we do know that one of them, Anne Putnam, made a public confession of guilt and repentance when she was dying some years later. Of the nineteen people who were eventually hanged, the majority were thoroughly respectable men and women with unblemished records, as were most of those who died in fetid, debilitating prisons while waiting to be sentenced. Some of these victims were children. And the entire business was unnecessarily prolonged because a special court was appointed -- and therefore felt bound to heighten the emotional atmosphere and to find culprits in order to justify its existence.

and the Rosenbergs were innocent...

Here is the roster of persons executed during the Salem Trials:

1. Bridget Bishop, thrice married, given to extravagant dress, gambling, and drink, often quarreled in public with her husbands, unpopular, accused of witchcraft 12 years earlier
2. Sarah Good, a vagrant, given to cursing people who refused her alms, probably mentally afflicted; had a child not yet weaned and who died shortly after Sarah’s being taken to prison; another child, Dorcas, aged five, was also accused of witchcraft and imprisoned, becoming deranged as a result
3. Elizabeth How, no previous record
4. Susannah Martin, no previous record
5. Rebecca Nurse, no previous record; matriarch of a numerous and respectable family, revered by her descendents, admired by her neighbors (over 40 signed a petition on her behalf when she was first accused), and in general known for her gentle disposition and saintly character
6. Sarah Wilds, no previous record
7. George Burroughs, former minister of Salem, which he left as a result of a salary dispute; much loved by his parishioners in Wells, Maine (who petitioned on his behalf), recited the Lord’s Prayer immediately before his execution (believed to be impossible for wizards)
8. Martha Carrier, no previous record; outspoken critic of the court, staunchly denied all charges
9. George Jacobs, no previous record
10. John Proctor, wealthy landowner, hot-tempered, opposed to the trials from the beginning, accused when he came to the defense of his wife Elizabeth, petitioned to Boston ministers concerning the highhandedness of the Salem judges after the execution of Rebecca Nurse
11. John Willard, no previous record
12. Giles Cory, “pressed to death” (peinte forte et dure) for refusing to give evidence; a bitter, cantankerous man for a record of petty theft, once accused of arson; but even his enemies acknowledged that he died bravely. His wife, Martha, was an outspoken disbeliever in witchcraft and denounced the trials as a fraud from the beginning.
13. Mary Esty, no previous record; sister to Rebecca Nurse, similar in character and disposition but with a sharper intelligence; her depositions, when questioned by the judges, are remarkable for cogency and for the compassion she displayed towards her accusers
14. Alice Parker, no previous record
15. Mary Parker, no previous record
16. Ann Pudeator, no previous record
17. Margaret Scott, no previous record
18. Wilmott Redd, no previous record
19. Samuel Wardwell, no previous record

In addition, 15-20 other persons died in prison while awaiting trial as a result of the foul and insalubrious conditions there. Since they had not been formally sentenced, the court was guilty of criminal negligence in every one of those cases.

Thus of the 19 executed for witchcraft, only five had reputations in any way questionable. With the possible exceptions of Bridget Bishop and Giles Corey, it is difficult to see what they did that might be considered indictable, let alone to incur capital punishment.

All in all, not a very impressive percentage. That hammer doesn't appear to have been wielded very skilfully. If I were engaging a carpenter for a job, I'd expect him to hit nails with a little more accuracy.

Some footnotes to the Salem trials:

1. Several of the accused, seeing how things were going, simply left Salem before their cases came to trial; this was possible, provided they had sufficient money and connections. In every case, they were cleared of all charges afterwards. In addition, most of those executed were posthumously rehabilitated.

2. One of the accused, whose name has not come down to posterity, retaliated by bringing a counter-suit for libel against his accusers. The penalties for libel were quite severe at that time; the claimed damages were a thousand pounds. The accusers, realizing that they would be impoverished for life if they were found guilty, promptly withdrew their accusations. This shows that the young women knew very well what they were doing and that the court judges, in acquiescing with their decision, were fearful of bad publicity.

3. Fortunately for the colonies, the hothouse atmosphere of the Salem Trials dissipated with remarkable speed. When Cotton Mather tried to stir things up again some months afterwards, his attempt was promptly squelched by the backlash. His own father, Increase Mather, wrote a pamphlet suggesting that witch-hunting itself might be the work of the Devil, tempting men to acts of foolishness and leading to the deaths of innocent persons. In fact, this pamphlet, along with the general reaction against the Trials, virtually ended witchcraft trials in America.

One further note: the Rosenbergs were unquestionably guilty of sedition and treason. Even if the persons executed at Salem and at other witch trials had been guilty of their alleged crimes, the scale is so much smaller that a comparison between them and the Rosenbergs is absurd; since the great majority of them were innocent, the comparison is also base.

And people denied the Rosenbergs, Hiss, the Hollywood Ten, etc. were guilty until the Venona transcripts made it impossible to--and some still do anyway. You're reading histories written by the enemies of the Puritans, just as the history of the McCarthy poeriod was written by enemies until recently.

One doesn't have to read accounts of "the enemies of the Puritans"; the court transcripts bear this interpretation out. The Puritans themselves, following Increase Mather's lead, dumped witchcraft trials once and for all. The Salem fiasco made it clear to them that the idea was a wretched failure.

Salem is of course not the only witchcraft trial. I have chosen it as an example because:

a. The atmosphere in which the witchcraft trials was so emotion-ridden and the court procedures so high-handed that a substantial number of innocent people were materially injured or even killed, and

b. The punishment administered even to those who were guilty was grossly out of proportion to the offense.

Let it enter the record that to this day the Roman Catholic Church, along with many other Christian denominations, approaches witchcraft with deadly seriousness. The Church simply does not publize it, for often reasons.

We dumped blacklists once the threat was defeated and we released the Japanese-Americans from Manzanar after the war.

The internment of the Japanese-Americans never should have happened in the first place -- a point that you yourself have made repeatedly. The same is true of the witch trials.

Orrin's argument would hold water if it were based on fact. It would make sense, today, in places as various as Gabon. S. Africa and S. Florida, where witchcraft is, in fact, antisocial.

But the medieval witch persecution, of which Salem was almost the last gasp, was not an example of a society reacting against a threat. Before the Malleus movement, the simple rustic spells the survivied in Europe posed no threat to either order or religion.

The witch persecution was invented by the Church (one result of its Thomist insanities), which taught its members to act in certain ways and then robbed and murdered them for so acting.

It is not so clear what the motivations were. Money, as always. Probably also (though obviously not for the authors of the Malleus who were dupes for bishops the same way McCarthy was) a put up job to exterminate any freedom of thought.

It worked for a while -- centuries in fact -- but religion can never prevail on its merits against materialism, and eventually the collapse of the witch fantasy took down the intellectual claims of religion along with it.

Yet it was popular and was upheld by the Supreme Court. Societies defend themselves from threats--real and imagined. As the military told FDR, the threat from Japanese-Americans was imagined. As the book in question shows, withcraft is a real and enduring threat.

Harry:

Yeah, whatever happened to religion?

The threat may or may not have been real, but the witchcraft trials in Salem and elsewhere did a poor job of meeting it. The majority of the persons accused were innocent. Nearly every one of the defendants at Salem had his reputation officially rehabilitated, and the court proceedings were declared null and void a mere five years after they took place.

Compare this to the Rosenberg trial, where the evidence was clear to all but a few fanatics and any documents that emerged subsequently (i.e., Venona) merely confirmed what everyone knew at the time. And the evidence at the trial was documentary, not mere hearsay.

Nobody goes to it for practical advice any more. That used to be a big part of its program, but the Church committed suicide in that respect by inventing crimes and fantasizing about things that people could learn to check out.

Much better to have stuck with promises of an afterlife, because nobody can prove that's a con.

Josh:

To the contrary; here are three things I think we can agree on:

No one in Salem mentioned their belief in witchery publicly.

No one in '50s America made a show of their Stalinism.

No Nisei voiced support for Japan.

So in all three cases the repression worked.

Harry:

More Americans believe in astrology than Darwinism and more in Christianity than the other two combined.

Oj, a state does not have the right to persecute its citizens for imagined crimes. People who fear imaginary threats are called paranoid schizophrenics. Societies that do so are equally demented. As Harry says, witchcraft is a harmless delusion. Witchcraft isn't communism.

Our only modern equivalent to the witch trials are the daycare child abuse trials that fed on yuppie hysteria over child molestation, was led by psychiatric inquisitors using coercive techniques to extract sham accusations from toddlers, and condemned innocent people to long prison terms and social excommunication. I suppose that you support these trials as well.

I didn't say they have the right to--I said they do. As communism is a direct threat to democracy, so too is withcraft a direct threat to a Christian society. We need not persecute witches now--though I would--but our ancestors persecuted them for the same reason we persecuted the Japanese-Americans in the 40s, communists in the '50s, white supremacists after OK City and Islamicists after 9-11. No society need tolerate threats to its existence.

OJ -- Here is a sample of the sort of evidence used in the trials:

"The Deposistion of Ann putnam who testifieth and saith that on 'th of April 1692, I saw the Apperishtion of Gilles Cory com and afflect me urging me to writ in his book and so he continewed hurting me by times tell the 19'th April being the day of his examination : and dureing the time of his examination Giles Cory did tortor me a grat many times.and allso severall times sence Giles Cory or his Apperance has most greviously afflected me by beating pinching and almost Choaking me to death urging me to writ in his book also on the day of his examination I saw Giles Cory or his Apperance most greviously afflect and torment mary walcott mercy lewes and sarah vibber and I veryly beleveue that Giles Cory is a dreadfull wizzard for sence he has ben in prison he or his Apperance has come to me a grat many tims and afflected me. An Putnam owned upon her oath that the above written evidence is the truth to the Jury of inquest Sept 9: 92"

Notice anything peculiar about this deposition? If not, your sister the attorney can point it out to you. Not a single word of it is provable. It is either assertions about apparitions -- which by their very nature cannot be corroborated -- or talk about what she felt, what she believed.

And now we will take two hypothetical cases: me sitting in judgment during the Rosenberg trial and me sitting in judgment during the Salem trials; it's your own comparison, so let's take it a step further.

I hear the evidence about the Rosenbergs, and what do I find? An abundance of testimony about their inclinations to betray their country, an abundance of documentary evidence that they leaked as much information as they could get their hands on, and no evidence whatever that they were coerced or threatened or that any extenuating circumstances apply. Perhaps a few details of how they plotted the country's overthrow remain to be revealed, but the general picture is clear. What are the consequences of the Rosenbergs' actions? Had they achieved their aim, they would have turned over every American to slavery, for that is what Communism is. Consequently I consign them to death with a clear conscience.

Now imagine me sitting in judgment at the Salem trials. Assuming that I have the patience to hear out all of this touchy-feely business about what the young women felt and what they believed and what they think might have occurred, and to sit patiently through their histrionics -- such an assumption, incidentally, is something in the nature of a hundred-to-one shot, but let us assume it -- it is possible that I might, through careful filtering of evidence and isolating the witnesses from each other and hearing everyone's story separately, conclude that one of the defendants -- let us say Sarah Goode, who was the most "witchlike" of them -- did in fact mutter spells under her breath with the intent of bringing misfortune to the community. We will actually go further and assume that it is proven that she directed her most fearsome curses at me, a prominent citizen, because she resents my influence and wealth.

So what? She has not injured me one iota. Going on Franklin's principle that we are judged by what we actually do -- and the principle was known before Franklin's time, even in Puritan New England -- I find that Sarah Goode is certainly a malicious and disagreeable person, but that she has not materially injured anyone and consequently she may go in peace. Be off with you, old woman; and as for you, Ann Putnam, Abigail Williams, Betsy Parris, et al, go back to your 17th-century equivalent of an encounter group and stop bothering us with your adolescent pranks.

"How do you know she is a witch?"

"She turned me into a newt."

"A newt?"

"Well, I got better."

Josh: thanks for the excellent history lesson.

OJ: did it ever occur to you that the persecution may have done more damage to the society than the accused witches ever could have?

"Yeah, whatever happened to religion?" About six months ago, you carried an item asserting the belief, among the religious, that God is powerful, conscious, and morally aware, has reached all time lows. I suspect that is Harry's point--that the trend started with sham witch trials.

A perfect example of the cure being worse than the disease.

Jeff:

With a 400 year lag time?

Josh:

In conseding that she uttered spells you concede she practiced withcraft, a practice antithetical to the society in which she lived. She should have been burned like any subversive.

Josh:

Thanks for your hard work. You, Harry and Robert are all arguing on the basis that the authorities knew it was hogwash. Maybe, but I doubt it. Harry's insistence that it was all about control and money is so easy to say and so ridiculous. But Harry preaches a rather severe dualism.

The fact is that fear is part of human nature and we can respond over-dramatically to preceived threats. It is very dicey to pronounce on the basis of comfortable, all-knowing hindsight. Remember how you felt scanning the skies the afternoon of 9/11? Frankly, I'm impressed the Salem episode was so isolated and short-lived.

Rationalists like to pretend they are all above that, but the abuse trials Robert referred to are just one of many examples of science leading us down the same path. Take a look at the history of medical and psychological treatments in history and you will see lots of unspeakable cruelties, calmly administered in a spirt of benign enlightenment.

And even if you reject the theology behind it, what does modern psychology have to say about the power of voodoo?

Nobody wants to respond to Orrin's point, which is that societies under threat will do what it takes to protect themselves. If the spirit of fevered excess takes hold, about the worst thing one can do is to say it is all nonesense and there is no threat at all. This was Puritan New England. If we assume for a moment the charges were a product of theological error and the whole idea of possession was nonsense, is that not even a greater reason to ask what the heck the accused thought they were doing? Presumably they were making conscious choices and lying through their teeth.

Peter:

The problem is to distinguish actual from perceived threat. The failure to do so will mean the results of combatting these "threats" will be far worse than the threat itself.

What do you suppose happened to the property of those found guilty of witchcraft or heresy?

I lived in LA during the Manhattan Beach McMartin pre-school hysteria--my office was just two blocks down the road. As it was winding down, I happened to be in the KABC radio studios as the hysteria's victims talked about what happened to them. Absolutely chilling. And not the first thing scientific about it.

Jeff:

So is it therefore your belief that child abusers should not be persecuted?

Peter, it is fine to say that these threats seemed real to the people who brought the accusations, but it is not an excuse, and it does not absolve them from the judgements of history. Fear cannot justify everything we do in respose to that fear, we are still responsible for applying disciplined, rational analysis to verify the truth of our fears. We don't get off with saying "I was afraid".

Bad science and bad theology are avoidable. People choose their ideas, and are accountable for the implications. It is like being under the influence of alcohol - it warps your judgement. But you decided to drink, so society will hold you accountable for what you do under it's influence.

But OJ's problem is that in retrospect, he would do the same thing. He would do it now.

Robert:

No, the point is that we do the same thing now. Those militia groups were no threat, nor were the Muslims we deported. No one cares though. When threatened we respond by ruthlessly repressing those who are most alienated from our system.

Robert:

What you say is sensible and really describes how we improve through the lessons of history, although your alcohol analogy is a stretch. It is one thing to say our ancestors were proven wrong, quite another to condemn them as immoral or criminal fools who should have known better because it was obvious there was no threat. You can make such a judgment sometimes but only after studying the subject on its historical terms. Are you as morally censorious about Inca human sacrifice?

Jeff is wrong when he says there was nothing scientific about the abuse scandals. It was as much a product of science as the witchcraft trials were of religion. His problem is he cannot accept that science can be bad or even wrong. In that case, it isn't science anymore to him.

"Are you as morally censorious about Inca human sacrifice?"

Yes.

Peter:

Which part of science led to the McMartin preschool persecutions? Better yet, please show which part of the scientific method caused them.

Perhaps you could define for me what you mean by science before I provide bad/wrong examples thereof.

Jeff:

Psychiatry, the sister of Darwinism and Marxism.

Jeff:

Spend some time in family court listening to so-called experts from the exploding caring professions. They all start with their C.V.'s, give expert opinions on the authorities in their fields, discuss the systematic methodologies they use, describe their rigourous assessments of the parties and then pronounce. Why do you think they and not ministers and priests are called in evidence? What do you think the whole concept of an expert witness is all about?

Robert:

Oh, really? I suppose they should be strung up posthumously for not inventing an enlightenment or finding new gods? I imagine you have a lot of ongoing beefs with history.

Peter:
That isn't what led to the McMartin persecution. Allegations by a manic-depressive mom regarding satanic ritual abuse started the hysteria, led by Fundamentalist parents. No amount of negative evidence could stem it, until the McMartin family was financially destroyed.

You are the lawyer, you will have to tell me. Are the methodologies systemic and rigorous? How is what they say different from religious leaders? Is the testimony of religious leaders more or less likely to withstand scrutiny then other expert witnesses?

From above, though, I'm still curious as to what you mean by bad/wrong science.

Peter:

I'll bet Robert figures Inca sacrifice to be a cautionary example of why not to take protestations of revealed, divine, guidance uncritically.

Jeff:

And forty million abortions is evidence of why we sometimes should.

"Oh, really? I suppose they should be strung up posthumously for not inventing an enlightenment or finding new gods? I imagine you have a lot of ongoing beefs with history."

And you would forgive them why? Because they didn't know any better? I thought you guys were for absolute, objective morality. What you are telling me is that you are a multiculturalist, that a society's morality cannot be judged outside of it's cultural values framework.

Call me odd, but subscribe to a single morality that applies across cultures.

Robert:

The morality must stay the same but human knowledge has limits. Fifty years from now either those who are pro-abortion or those who are anti-choice will be viewed as having seriously transgressed someone's civil rights, but for now one side can plausibly be said to be just ignorant, in the same way that either the slave owners or the abolitionists were.

a) Or, fifty, or five hundred, years from now the dilemma will just as resistant to solution.

b) Or the problem will go away because we invented perfect birth control--which is the way with lots of dilemmas, their causes vanish.

c) Or we will be extinct because we forgot to have children.

I'm betting big on b), less so on c), and on a) if the other two fail to occur.

Robert:

Forgive them? Sorry, I'm not in the business of forgiving whole nations and societies, especially those before my time. It's above my pay grade. If you see this as a stark choice between "hey, cool" multicuturalism and self-evident wrongs deserving of ex post facto moral opproprium, you live in a simpler world than I.

You know, Robert, I have this problem with Judaism. I would consider it to be a profound, magisterial religion with much to teach me, but I just can't get my head around the way the Israelites treated their prisoners at Jericho. Upsets me terribly and colours my whole view of the faith's legitimacy. I mean, I just can't let it go.

Where is David? Hey, David, get in here, you have some explaining to do.

Don't pick on David, there is no guilt by inheritance. But OJ still wants to burn witches, pick on him.

OJ, good and evil is not a matter of knowledge, it is a matter of conscience. Every society will have some moral blind spot, some common everyday practice that is widely accepted, but wrong. The Aztecs had human sacrifice, the Puritans had witch burning, the Colonial Americans had slavery, and we have abortion. I am sure that each of these societies had individuals who knew in their conscience that these practices were wrong. As faulty as the individual conscience is, I hold it above all other means for determining what is good.

Robert:

Slave-owners who believed blacks not to be human and abortophiles who think babies not human are wrong, but not immoral. Ditto those who sacrifice humans in a sincere belief that their gods demand it. Immorality requires that you comprehend the nature of what you're doing.

Witch burning is simply right.

Speaking on behalf of all Jews everywhere, I'll have to get back to you on that. But, wasn't there a commandment to be followed?

Robert:

If Orrin wants to torch the local Wiccan coven, I'd be opposed, but I can't say for certain that it isn't in part because it is currently so marginal and fairly benign, and I would be surprised if anyone seriously did. What would your thoughts be if witchcraft or voodoo swept the nation's youth like a brushfire? Que sera,sera?

It is fine to say individuals who knowingly do what they believe is wrong are to be condemned as weak or evil, but to jump from there to condemning collectivities is hazardous and I don't think logical. Our notion of conscience is quite modern, and so are tolerance, freedom of religion and free speech To say slavery is wrong and to be fought is one thing. To say all members of slaveholding societies stand charged in the dock of history is something else.

Also, there is a difference between an offensive social or religious practice like slavery and an immediate perceived threat to society. Oj's point, I think, is that societies can and will do what they have to to defend against external threats and can't be judged as immoral simply because history subsequently revealed the threat was overstated.

Church-bashers like to raise the Albigensian heresy as a clear-cut atrocity, but the Church was living in an era where it had just built order out of the murderous chaos of the Dark ages and acted as a moral check on brutal feudal society. It knew it needed more than moral suasion to maintain that. It was entirely reasonable for them to believe a popular cult of unorganized proto-hippies was both socially dangerous and religiously in error. It made a lot more effort to negotiate and mediate than most people think, but in the end concluded there was no choice but to crush it. I find it pretty meaningless to judge that according to 21st century notions of conscience or say the rights and wrongs were obvious. But that doesn't mean I conclude they were right or forgive them. It means history is a messy business. I have a hard enough time keeping up with my own culture and era without pronouncing on others.

It seems to me that 20 centuries to take on board the notion that anti-Semitism isn't, well, good, might put a little tarnish on the moral rectitude of our forebears.

Have the Jews ever threatened any society of which they were a part?

Somehow, I don't think so. Need to look for another excuse, then.

Jews deny the Messiah and thereby the very foundation of Christian society. No society need tolerate those who oppose its basis.

Killing people for thought crimes, eh?

That is the kind of morality that would make Mao proud.

We killed a lot of Confederates for their thought crime.

You are equating the two?

I guess I'm going to have to parse your next lecture on moral relativism very closely.

Careful not to confuse moral questions with political. Communism isn't immoral, per se, but we repressed it for good reason.

What about my previous point? Anti-Semitism killed people for what they thought, not what they did. Any morality worth more than a warm bucket of spit would be able to quickly figure out that is way, way, wrong.

20 centuries to come to that conclusion is simply unacceptable.

Jeff:

It's not morally wrong to deal harshly with folk who are unreconciled to society, just not always necessary.

By that it means that even the tiniest deviation from orthodoxy, no matter the form, is a warrant for any level of persecution.

I guess you don't think much of inalienable rights, then.

If you don't believe in inalienable rights you should be persecuted, because you're a threat to the society. Rights carry responsibilities.

Oh, so Jews don't deserve inalienable rights--after all, if they didn't then, they don't now, since their underlying beliefs haven't changed.

Very enlightening. Frightening, but enlightening.

Jews conform to and believe in the ideology of the Founding, otherwise they'd be fair game.

Their underlying beliefs haven't changed all these millenia, yet at one time they were fair game for persecution by the wielders of the same morality that says they no longer are.

You pose arguments against organized religion far more eloquently than I could ever hope to do.

Jeff:

You're getting yourself confused again about religious morality and what is permitted a state or society.

Judaism is not immoral, but if it conflicted with the principles of the Founding it would be justifiable to suppress it anyway.