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A Reader Ponders Pat and Population

From: Professor Christian Kopff, Boulder CO

Congratulations to Paul Gottfried for his piece on Pope Jonah. Traditionally a true prophet is known by the fulfillment of his vaticinations and the day before the piece appeared (and, naturally, some time after it was written) National Review Online published Jonah Goldberg's article "Islamic Rites: Why Muslims Need a Pope."

This article is important for a number of reasons.

1. As I said, it proves that Paul Gottfried is a true prophet. (He should not expect to be treated better than Jeremiah was by the pro-war establishment of his day.)
2. Goldberg's article explicitly equates Muslims with Protestants, who also need a Pope. It culminates in several paragraphs attacking Martin Luther. "He was more anti-Semitic than the Catholic church." He was responsible for the destruction of art in Switzerland and Protestant opposition to science (exemplified by the Amish, the Shakers and the Puritans). Because of Luther, "Protestants adopted the practice [of burning heretics] wholesale."
3. Goldberg frames this list of half-truths and bald-faced lies by two significant sentences.

"By almost every definition of the Left today – to the extent such definitions are applicable – the Protestant reformation and revolts were conservative events…. But reformers without restraint are not reformers, they're radicals."

Luther was both conservative (I agree here) and radical. The objection to both shows the pink panties of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s Vital Center liberalism under the Neo-Conservative miniskirt. "Conservatism" for the NRO crowd means defending the Roosevelt regime and it no longer disguises its contempt for the average American conservative, two-thirds of whom are Protestants.

4. This professional "defender of the West" has never heard of Albrecht Dürer or Hans Holbein in art, of Bach or Haydn or Luther himself in music, of Tycho Brahe or Kepler or Linnaeus in science. It is not just the ignorance, however; it is the animus. Goldberg did not make this up himself. This is the way he hears the East Coast Neo-Coms and Neo-Thoms talk about Protestant America and its traditions.

April 11, 2002