From Reliapundit, the Astute Blogger:
A postmodern cultural/historical/cultural relativististic leftist this comment at a thread on my post STEPHEN HAWKING: IDIOT.HERE:
Europe at that time was no more or less savage than the savages they encountered they just wore knee britches & silks rather than feathers & animal skins.This is pure postmodern rubbish.
Yes the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, as opposed to the various European empires that just warred on endlessly over land over succession over religion, burning heretics and witches.
Remember later Isabel & Ferdinand would force the Jews and Moors of Spain to convert, leave or die.
This is not propaganda this is history.
Here are the facts:
INQUISITION:
Henningsen-Contreras statistics for the period 1540-1700IN SUMMARY: OVER 160 YEARS, THE AWFUL HORRIBLE HORRIFYING SPANISH INQUISITION KILLED... ABOUT 1110 PEOPLE.
Tribunal
Number of preserved relaciones de causas from the period 1540-1700[79]
Number of trials in causa fidei reported in the preserved relaciones de causas[80]
Estimated number of all cases in the period 1540-1700[81]
Executions in persona reported in the preserved relaciones de causas[82]
The actual number of executions in persona in the period 1540-1700[83]
Total
1531
44674
~87000
826
At least 1080
THAT'S ABOUT... HMMMM 7/YEAR.
THE AZTECS WOULD RIP THE HEARTS OUT OF 50,000 PEOPLE IN ONE DAY. ON AVERAGE, MAYBE 250,000 A YEAR.
SO DON'T TELL ME THAT WESTERN CIVILIZATION OR EUROPEAN COLONIAL POWERS WERE JUST AS BAD AS THE AZTECS.Estimates of the scope of the sacrifices
For the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they sacrificed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days, though there were probably far fewer sacrifices. According to Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony.[32] The higher estimate would average 14 sacrifices per minute during the four-day consecration. As a comparison, the Auschwitz concentration camp, working 24 hours a day with modern technology, approached but did not equal this pace: it executed about 19,200 a day at its peak. (Note: the limiting factor for the Nazis was not killing people, but efficient disposal (cremation) of the bodies.[33] Four tables were arranged at the top so that the victims could be jettisoned down the sides of the temple.[34] Nonetheless, according to Codex Telleriano-Remensis, old Aztecs who talked with the missionaries told about a much lower figure for the reconsecration of the temple, approximately 4,000 victims in total.
Michael Harner, in his 1977 article The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice, estimates the number of persons sacrificed in central Mexico in the 15th century as high as 250,000 per year. Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl, a Mexica descendant and the author of Codex Ixtlilxochitl, estimated that one in five children of the Mexica subjects was killed annually. Victor Davis Hanson argues that a claim by Don Carlos Zumárraga of 20,000 per annum is "more plausible."[35]
THAT'S POMO RUBBISH.
IT'S PROPAGANDA, NOT HISTORY. HEH.
AND ANOTHER THING:
- THE FOLKS WHO MAKE THIS ANTI-WEST/CULTURAL RELATIVIST ARGUMENT ALWAYS BLAME US, THE WEST, AMERICA, ANDJUDEO-CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION.
- IT THE BLAME AMERICA FIRST CROWD. THE POSTMODERN LEFT.
- THIS IS THE SAME CROWD WHO STATES THAT IRAQIS WERE BETTER OFF UNDER SADDAM.
SADDAM KILLED ON AVERAGE 80,000 IRAQIS A YEAR. FOR A FEW DECADES.
(LINKS HERE AND HERE.)
According to The New York Times, "he [Saddam] murdered as many as a million of his people, many with poison gas. He tortured, maimed and imprisoned countless more. His unprovoked invasion of Iran is estimated to have left another million people dead. His seizure of Kuwait threw the Middle East into crisis. More insidious, arguably, was the psychological damage he inflicted on his own land. Hussein created a nation of informants — friends on friends, circles within circles — making an entire population complicit in his rule".[7] Estimates for the number of dead in the Iran-Iraq war vary from 500,000[8] to 1.5 million.[9] Others have estimated 800,000 deaths caused by Saddam not counting the Iran-Iraq war.[10]WELL, ER UM... FROM 1865 TO 1965, THE KKK LYNCHED AND MURDERED 7900 BLACKS - A HORRIBLE AMOUNT, BUT NOT 1% OF WHAT SADDAM DID IN ONE TENTH THE TIME.
I AM NOT DEFENDING EITHER THE HORRIBLE INQUISITION OR THE EVIL KKK.
I AM ATTACKING THOSE WHO WOULD DEFEND AZTECS BY EQUATING THEM WITH THE INQUISITION, WHO ATTACK THE EUROPEAN COLONIAL POWERS AS BEING WORSE THAN THE INDIGENOUS EMPIRES, AND THOSE WHO WOULD RIGHTFULLY ATTACK THE KKK, BUT THEN EXCUSE SADDAM.
WHO DOES THIS ALL THE TIME?
THE POSTMODERN LEFT.
THEY ARE UNPRINCIPLED AND/OR MISINFORMED.
Or as Reagan said; it's not that they don't know anything; it's that everything they know is wrong.
Bernal Diaz a soldier in Cortez's army wrote 'The True History of the Conquest of Mexico' which is regarded as the most accurate of three descriptions of the conquest.
ReplyDeleteI read the book and the initial relations between Cortez and the Spanish, the Aztec king Moctezuma and his nobles was peaceful. The major problem occurred when the Spanish began to insist that the Aztecs end their human sacrifices. While Moctezuma appeared to go along with that the nobles were absolutely opposed and turned to violence against the Spaniards.
In the book Diaz comes off as completely honest and credible in everything he says, so I for one belive him.
By the way it is a most excellent read about an almost fairy tale journey which is stranger than fiction....5 stars hands down, it's a medium long book, but you'll finish it sooner than you think because it's so unbelievable yet totally believable at the same time.
Perhaps they're including the diseases carried by the Spaniards, which certainly killed millions and millions of native Mesoamericans. Diaz's accounts of the conquest of Mexico is one of the most authentic historical accounts we have of Aztec society.
ReplyDeleteP.S., the Spaniards were never known for their stength and brutality on the battlefield. Just watch Pau Gasol get bullied around the paint by players half his size. ;-)
Bernal Diaz's book is an absolutely fascinating read. At one point, if I recall correctly, he reports that the Spanish found a human sacrifice temple in every one of the villages and towns they visited. The men were totally grossed out and Cortez was outraged, but was advised by his priest to contain his anger until he had enough of a force to do something about it. By the time they got to the Aztec capital they had half the neighborhood with them because everyone else hated the Aztecs too.
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere that there was a word in the Aztec language that actually meant to-kick-a-sacrificial-victim-down-the-temple-stairs-after-cutting-his-heart-out. There's specialization for you.
The Inquisition does not include the European Witch Hunts which went from about 1450 to 1750. They were mostly secular in nature although the churches publication of Malleus Maleficarum aka The Witches Hammer (yep, a real book, not made up by Dan Brown) certainly helped stoke the fires (as it were). The Malleus was written by an Inquisitor in the late 1400's HOWEVER the Inquisition itself was not all so much interested in witches, looking at the subject as more superstition. It was far more interested in heretiocs and blasphemers and expulsing Jews.
ReplyDeleteApproximately 40,000 to 50,000 women and men were killed as witches during those 300 years. Not to mention those tortured and permanently disfigured or disabled because of it. And that same thing can be said of the Inquisition.
Not my Church's finest hour.
Still, nothing compared to the Noble Savages of the Americas, Saddam or Hitler for shear wanton butchery.
Old World and New World diseases of course were interchanged worldwide after the discoveries in ignorance without fault. Unfortunately, the Old World diseases proved much more deadly to the Indians than did theirs to everyone else.At least 80% of the Indians perished because of disease which is the main reason for the abundance of Mestizos in Latin America and not full blooded Indians. This also impressed a superiority of the Christian God in the eyes of the Indians and resulted in their mass conversions to the 'stronger God' because the Spanish weren't dying like they were.
ReplyDeletePut yourself in their shoes: Invaders show up with new God against our gods and we all start to drop dead while nothing happens to them.
Or did God himself actually allow a type of judgment to fall upon a bloodthirsty wicked society when their sin had reached the breaking point?
Pastorius,
ReplyDeleteby far my "favorite" of the moral relativists excuse making machines comparisons by far is when they try to equate Christianity with Islam by pointing to pro life terrorists. I mean seriously there's been like what, two or three anti abortion terrorists attacks in the past ten years, where usually only one person is murdered, as oppose to well over a hundred terrorist attacks by Jihadists with multiple fatalities in the past year alone.
Not to mention, that there's virtually no support for killing abortion doctors in the Christian community, even in the pro life movement.
ReplyDeleteFar be it from me to stop a papist from questioning their faith, but as I understand it, the Malleus Mallificarum was meant to mitigate the witch hunts by proscribing standardized tests -as ridiculous as they were- in place of ad hoc presumptions of witchhood. The attempt of standardization left witch hunting practices more open to the critical review that did eventually end the practice.
ReplyDeleteAztecs, Catholics, Nazis - all a load of kuffar wussies.
ReplyDeleteWe Muslims hold the world record by sacrificing 270 million infidels to Allah, and we aren't finished yet! http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/tears-of-jihad/
It's not a matter of questioning my Faith, mac, just my Church. :)
ReplyDeleteMalleus was originally written to standardize (if you will) but by no means mitigate the witch hunts. The Church actually may (or may not -- sketchy evidence) banned it in 1490.
This is what happens when you let the gov't (or The Church) control the press.
Ayatollah Khomeini,
ReplyDeleteI don't know, if the Aztecs were still around and had not been conquered by the Spanish, the death toll they might be causing today might be even higher than that of the Jihadists. I mean they did sacrifice a huge number of people for their gods, many of which we can be certian did not go willingly. Of course we just don't know.