The Sullivan Act

I should have known that Andrew Sullivan would wig out about Eric Rudolph. If I were a gay man, I'd be really uncomfortable around fundamentalists of any stripe. As it stands, I hope they string Rudolph up, or at least lock him up in the deepest, darkest cell they can find. But today the old boy really overreacts. Entitling his entry "Christo-Fascism," Sullivan seems to want to have it both ways, arguing that of course "the concept of a christian terrorisr" is an oxymoron, but then points out that "the crusades were a form of terror. So was the Inquisition at a state level."





Really? I was under the impression that the Crusades were a series of wars designed to take back lands that had been gained by Islam through military conquest in the 7th century. As with many wars of that (or any) era, civilians were directly, often deliberately, harmed. To call this terror is to call all warfare up to (and perhaps including) the Iraq war terror. One could say that the religious aspect of the Crusades grants them special calumny. But then how can one say that "christian terrorist" is in any way self-contradictory?





As to the (Spanish) Inquisition, it wasn't terror. It was tyranny. There is a difference. A subtle one, but it is there. Terrorists are extrapolitical, they exist outside the state. They may be in line with the state's goals (such as the Ku Klux Klan), but there is a line of seperation for the purposes of plausible denial, and just as often terrorists are engaged in overthrowing an established power. Terrorists are guerrillas who target civilians. The Spanish Inquisition, on the other hand, was an endowment of the Kingdom of Spain, established for the express purpose of carrying out Ferdinand and Isabella's instructions regarding conversos, those Jews and Muslims who had converted to Christianity at the state's prodding. It enjoyed the state's full and open support, and crushed opposition with the mechanisms of the state (The Pope's sole involvement in this enterprise was to appoint a Dominican friar -- the notorious Torquemada -- as its head later on, to rein in the abuses of the system. He did so, but insincere converts were still punished). This is tyranny, and that word exists so that we can use it. Let's not start calling everything terror, shall we, Sully? Keep this up and before long you'll be calling tax cuts a weapon of mass destruction.