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Entry: The Ron Paul Revolution Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_ron_paul_revolution#8775 Post contents: Re: John Ball, Thanks for the expertise... but if the development of Common Law was accomplished by pre-Reformation jurists in England, and mirrored in the local liberties of Imperial cities in Germany and Italy, and cantons in Switzerland--and found echoes in the Spanish fueros, the claims of the French parlements, for instance, doesn't this suggest how SILLY it is to credit English Protestantism with inventing the ideas of limited government, decentralism, or resistance to royal authority? Elsewhere you wrote that the Holy See had become "politicized" by the time of Henry VIII's Y chromosome shortage (actually, Catherine bore him at least two sons, I believe--who died of the syphilis he picked up, perhaps from one Boleyn sister, before passing it on to another).... Perhaps a better word is "independent." Unlike the sadly subjugated Patriarchate of Constantinople under the Byzantines, or the Archbishopric of Canterbury under the Tudors et cetera (John, what do you think it MEANT when Henry dug up the body of Thomas Becket and threw it in the river????), the Vatican retained a political independence. This entailed it in ugly things like Italian politics, but prevented a repeat of the Babylonian Captivity in Avignon. No doubt, the current nominal independence of Vatican City is a wise and prudent solution--and it helped Pius XII personally save thousands of Jews from the German occupiers in 1944. But the popes of the 16th century, to maintain the spiritual independence of the Church, had to act as rulers--or else be ruled. They sinned, made mistakes, committed crimes--but nothing on the order of the enormous cultural crime of the Reformation, from which Europe has never recovered. Remember that it was Protestant churches (beginning with the Anglicans) who accepted artificial birth control, emptying the cradle to be filled by the children of Allah. They were followed by nearly every Protestant denomination--and by the Protestantized Catholics of Europe and America. The results are easy to predict, sadly: A Mexican North America, an Islamic Europe, and the last few Anglo-Saxons (my descendants, I hope, included) hunkering down in Iceland. Sent at: 2008 09 07