Sunday, September 24, 2006

Crusader Blow-Back

Philippe Douste-Blazy, France's foreign minister, WaPo, Sept. 24, 2006:
"You may believe yourself stronger because you have your own values of strength," he said in an interview, referring to the United States. "But for others there are other values. Therefore, I believe what is essential and ideal is to have respect of others and therefore knowledge of others. That is why the clash of civilization is in fact a clash of ignorance."
Norman F. Cantor, "The First Crusade and After," in Civilization of the Middle Ages, HarperCollins 1993, p. 301:
"[T]he crusading ideal... had a profound and not altogether fortunate impact on medieval life. The crusades gave an absolute moral and religious sanction to the union of military force and religious devotion. An important legacy of the crusades was the lesson that it taught Europeans -- that it is right and fitting to kill and destroy in the service of Christian ideals. The immediate sufferers from this belief during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were Jews and heretics. The long-range sufferer was European society as a whole."

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