A Right-Wing Monster

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/opinion/25douthat.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=a%20right-wing%20monster&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 10:42 AM
Subject: re: A Right-Wing Monster
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  Mr. Duthout isn't wrong to observe that "Islam and liberal democracy have not yet proven natural bedfellows", but the experiment is only recently under way. One might as easily and as rightly have noted that Protestantism seemed inimical to peace, depending on when one wrote.  The century after Martin Luther's split with Rome saw wars raging across Europe--we even had a massacre of Huguenots in Florida--yet Catholics and Protestants have been living peacefully in Europe and this country for centuries now.  Mr. Duthout may still dream of a Europe united in monolithic allegiance to the Church of Rome (except for those stiff-necked Jews) but the rest of us have found that diversity--and tolerance--can be  very good things.

Barry Haskell Levine