[Buddha-l] New Verso series: Counterblasts

[curt steinmetz]

And one hardly needs to drag Stalin, Mao and Robespierre into it at all, 
since the announcement explicitly and proudly proclaims their 
inspiration to be .... Puritanism! You know, the people who really did 
wage "War on Christmas", and who banned public performances of 
Shakespeare's plays, etc?

One of the primary themes of the original Puritan pamphleteers was, 
literally, Witch-hunting. The Puritans were outraged as the shamefully 
effeminate laxity with which Witches were being tried and executed in 
England. In fact, there was really only one good Witch-hunt in all of 
English history, and that was during the brief period when radical 
Puritans controlled East Anglia and the Puritan "Witch Finders" Matthew 
Hopkins and John Stearn oversaw the trial and execution of 100-300 
people (mostly women) in just about 18 months' time. While even that was 
hardly a proper reign of terror by modern standards, up in Scotland, 
where the Presbyterians (the Puritans kissing cousins) held sway, they 
were burning Witches at a rate that, if corrected for population size, 
would be the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of Witchcraft trials if 
the same were to happen in the U.S. today.

Curt

Dan Lusthaus wrote:
>> Such polemics reappeared both before and during the French,
>> Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions of the last century.
>
> And what stunning successes they were! Just what everyone needs: More
> Cultural Revolutions!!! More KGB! Off with their heads!
>
> Dan
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