Taranto’s dilemma

Hmm, what’s James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal going to do when he writes his “Best of the Web” column on Monday? Side with Pope Benedict against the Muslims? But that would mean siding with a person who by Taranto’s standards is a genocidal anti-Muslim bigot. Side with the Muslims? That seems more likely. Taranto, while not literally calling the pope an anti-Muslim bigot, will nevertheless let on that the pope has regrettably gone too far by seeming to condemn Islam as a religion and thus has put himself in some very bad company, like, uh, Charles Martel, Pope Urban II, the Emperor Manuel II, John Quincy Adams, Alexis de Toqueville, Mark Twain, and Winston Churchill … not to mention Ralph Peters and James Taranto.

Meanwhile, we can only assume that Ralph Peters is sharpening his verbal knives at the moment, with allusions to “Hitler’s Pope.”

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Ben writes:

I’m also waiting to hear what Pat Buchanan will say as well. Will he back up the Pope or say he went too far.

We already know what he would say if a rabbi got up and used the words of the Pope.

LA replies:

Even I wouldn’t say that Muhammad brought only evil. But look at the situation of Manuel II Paleologos. Cornered by the Ottomans, even becoming a hostage to them at one point and being forced to help them destroy a Christian city, facing the inevitable doom of his empire, which occurred during the reign of his son Constantine XI Paleologos, who died in battle at the gates of Constantinople on May 29, 1453.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 16, 2006 08:40 AM | Send