by George J. Dance
When I joined the Libertarian Party of Canada, conspiracy theory was in vogue. One book that used to be circulated a lot was Gary Allen's None Dare Call it Conspiracy. Naturally I read it. I was struck by the constant references to Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope, which Allen considered the Bible of the conspirators; so, a copy being in the LPC library, I read that too.
Years later, I have forgotten most of Quigley's book. But one thing that stood out was Quigley's theory of the "Peru to Pakistan Axis", which stuck in my head and which contemporary events keep reminding me of.
Quigley's idea was that the roughly 1,000-year Muslim occupation of Spain and southern Italy turned those 2 regions culturally Muslim. Even after the Christians regained them, the culture remained essentially Muslim, and its fundamentalist Catholicism essentially the same as fundamentalist Islam, with things like the subordination of women and the killing of "heretics" and "infidels."
When a strong Catholic state emerged in Spain, it, too, was culturally Muslim, and its foreign policy was the Islamic policy of jihad. We all know the history: the invasion of and massacres in the Netherlands; the attempted invasion of England; 100 years of war, looting, and killing in Germany; and - worst of all - the jihad in South America, with the almost total extermination of the "infidel" population. Through it all, the Spanish state was stauchly supported by the official Catholic church, with its own power base in culturally Islamic southern Italy.
Spain emerged as a world power in the 16th century, due to the massive gold reserves looted from South America. It collapsed as a power less than 100 years later, for the same reason: rampant inflation caused by too much money chasing too little real wealth. But only in the 19th century did Spain start emerging from the cultural Islamic paradigm, and only in the anarchist revolution of the 20th did it shake off the Catholic Islamist hegemony. (Note that almost the first act of the Spanish anarchists in any community, as George Orwell noted in Homage to Catalonia, was to kill the priests.)
The Catholic church itself has largely shaken off the Islamist paradigm, at least in northern Europe and North America. But many are still infected by it, including those who grew up in the culturally Islamic areas of Italy, Spain, and the Spanish-occupied parts of South America (such as Argentina, the birthplace of the present Pope).
Which explains one motivation - not the only motivation, of course - for the hostility of some in the Catholic church to libertarians and libertarianism. They see us too as heretics or infidels, suitable only for killing the bodies to save the souls, as with the people of the Netherlands, Germany, and Spanish-occupied South America. Fortunately, with the Church tamed by the Enlightenment, they lack the power, and can only rant and rave about the 'libertarian invasion." But there is nothing but lack of power stopping them from reverting to their previous methods of persuasion.
It is time to identify the Catholic anti-libertarian "crusade" as what it is: a continuation of the historical pattern of Catholic jihadism.
When I joined the Libertarian Party of Canada, conspiracy theory was in vogue. One book that used to be circulated a lot was Gary Allen's None Dare Call it Conspiracy. Naturally I read it. I was struck by the constant references to Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope, which Allen considered the Bible of the conspirators; so, a copy being in the LPC library, I read that too.
Years later, I have forgotten most of Quigley's book. But one thing that stood out was Quigley's theory of the "Peru to Pakistan Axis", which stuck in my head and which contemporary events keep reminding me of.
Quigley's idea was that the roughly 1,000-year Muslim occupation of Spain and southern Italy turned those 2 regions culturally Muslim. Even after the Christians regained them, the culture remained essentially Muslim, and its fundamentalist Catholicism essentially the same as fundamentalist Islam, with things like the subordination of women and the killing of "heretics" and "infidels."
When a strong Catholic state emerged in Spain, it, too, was culturally Muslim, and its foreign policy was the Islamic policy of jihad. We all know the history: the invasion of and massacres in the Netherlands; the attempted invasion of England; 100 years of war, looting, and killing in Germany; and - worst of all - the jihad in South America, with the almost total extermination of the "infidel" population. Through it all, the Spanish state was stauchly supported by the official Catholic church, with its own power base in culturally Islamic southern Italy.
Spain emerged as a world power in the 16th century, due to the massive gold reserves looted from South America. It collapsed as a power less than 100 years later, for the same reason: rampant inflation caused by too much money chasing too little real wealth. But only in the 19th century did Spain start emerging from the cultural Islamic paradigm, and only in the anarchist revolution of the 20th did it shake off the Catholic Islamist hegemony. (Note that almost the first act of the Spanish anarchists in any community, as George Orwell noted in Homage to Catalonia, was to kill the priests.)
The Catholic church itself has largely shaken off the Islamist paradigm, at least in northern Europe and North America. But many are still infected by it, including those who grew up in the culturally Islamic areas of Italy, Spain, and the Spanish-occupied parts of South America (such as Argentina, the birthplace of the present Pope).
Which explains one motivation - not the only motivation, of course - for the hostility of some in the Catholic church to libertarians and libertarianism. They see us too as heretics or infidels, suitable only for killing the bodies to save the souls, as with the people of the Netherlands, Germany, and Spanish-occupied South America. Fortunately, with the Church tamed by the Enlightenment, they lack the power, and can only rant and rave about the 'libertarian invasion." But there is nothing but lack of power stopping them from reverting to their previous methods of persuasion.
It is time to identify the Catholic anti-libertarian "crusade" as what it is: a continuation of the historical pattern of Catholic jihadism.
Quigley's theory is very interesting but hardly necessary to explain the bloodthirsty history of the Catholic Church. They did not need any Moslems to make them that way, and I think you'll find they had been happily killing those of different sects, and outright different religions for quite a while before Islam burst forth from the Arabian peninsula in the 7th Century. I would like to recommend that you and your readers take a fresh look at Rose Wilder Lane's classic The Discovery of Freedom. In that, she displays a rather different take on Mohammed and Islam than I have seen anywhere else. She suggests that the Moslems were far more civilized and open than the Catholic Europeans were, and that it was contact with them that fostered the beginning of the Renaissance. (Spreading from Sicily, which was occupied by the Saracens and thus had universities, medical schools, etc. which were easily accessible to the Italians of the day.) Far from being caused by the "Islamization" of Spanish culture, Lane avers pretty plainly that the Spanish Inquisition, for example, was initiated to root out that culture among the (by definition) suspect Moriscos in case they might have heard or might say something that would contradict the teachings of the Holy Mother Church. I suspect that this "libertarian invasion" talk from the current Pope is at least as much because he's a Marxist (and not the Groucho kind...) as because he's a Catholic. Now, if we want to talk about Marxist jihadism, that's a whole other interesting history...
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