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Indeed, the witch-panic exists everywhere and at every time, though sometimes it is weaker and sometimes stronger, and the words used vary. Today in Nigeria and in Evangelical Christian churches there is still persecution of "witches" and "cultists", while in mainstream America instead the word used is "hackers". But in England the witch-panic did not dissuade Newton from publishing his works on natural philosophy, as it had Descartes during his lifetime; and in Leipzig and Hanover the witch-panic did not dissuade Leibniz. Spinoza, whose Jewish family had fled the Inquisition, published many of the fundamental works of rationalism; had his family remained in Spain, only with great luck would he have escaped the auto-da-fé, and today we could not debate his ideas. How many potential Spinozas did we lose to the Inquisition because they had the misfortune of being born in Spain instead of in the Low Countries? England and Holland were certainly guilty of atrocities, at home and in their colonies abroad, but the indigenous peoples of many of their colonies retained their cultures. The Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee survives today, and possibly it inspired the revival of democracy in Europe. Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, and Buddhism survive in India today, as does knowledge of Vedic, Pali, and Sanskrit, despite centuries of English enslavement and exploitation. Contrast this with the fate of the cultural legacies of the Inka, the Maya, the Caribs, and the Quilmes. Genocide does not require extermination. Cultural obliteration and mass expulsion — the explicit intent of the Inquisition, and to a very great extent achieved throughout Iberia and the Spanish colonies in America — are equally genocidal. So, I say, do not accept censorship. It is a poisonous remedy, and it kills what is most precious in human culture before it begins to cure the illness for which it was prescribed. |