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Showing posts from June, 2016

The New Left and a bit of History

Once, in the old order, in the Ancien Régime, certain sects of the most powerful were sanctified and restricted from certain irreverence, scorn, or abuse by the public or vocal laypeople. In the Mediterranean, one could criticize the Emperor (or king or citizen body, depending) and the gods within reason, but if one overstepped the pale of dignity and decorum, penalties might ensue. If one would recant or simply shut one’s mouth promptly, the punishment, given a decent administration, would be relatively lax. With an odious or arbitrary princeps or administration anything goes. If one persisted and became a recalcitrant shouting defiance in the town square and scribbling harsh scrawl in nasty pamphlets dispersed to be read in other towns across the land, then the punishments mounted. The same applied to the kings and Church of the Middle Ages. Aside from some Norse sagas and a few other Germanic stories and legends as well as their interactions with the Romans and the more limited in