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Not the people, who use communism. I'm talking about communism economy system itself.

I readed people who used this system of communism or marxism, I have things to say: this is the worst than "rape of nanking",  crusades history of massacred or total death of WW2. However I only know little about communism economy system.

I'm about to buy "Communist Manifesto" to understand their system.(http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff133/onionethan/onion_Emoticons/019_.gif)

Save yourself some money and just stay away from it. It is nothing but evil, a system that is doomed from the start.

Now PR as Pizza was talking he is referring to an economic system.  Not the classic stigma we placed on the former Soviet Union.

Communism as an economic system is simply a system where the state determines the value of things.  All wealth is distributed amongst all the people equally by the state.  It is designed and conceived to bolster strong national ties by saying that everything we do we do for the state as far as finances are concerned. 

However pure Communism cannot work in large national organizations.  In smaller group settings it has worked but it simply is not feasible for larger cities, states, countries, etc.  It can be said that Jesus himself advocated a communistic mentality in that the dealings with money and material goods was basically to distribute what you had...live small with just the shoes on your feet and staff in hand, whatever money you get you turn around and give to those that are less fortunate.  However one should also note that is on a small more personal manner, He also understood that governments need more and operate differently, as evidence of giving Ceasar what is Ceasar's.

So really Communism is not evil in and of it's self...because it is simply an economic system.  I would not worry about reading the "Communist Manifesto" though Pizza because it does go much further than simple economics.  It also gets into a great deal of Marx's ideology. 

And on the flip side of that pure Capitalism does not work either.  We all like to think that we in America are living in a Capitalistic society...when in truth we are a hybrid of Socialism.  If we were pure Communistic then every road would be a toll road, and mailing a letter could cost you all sorts of different prices depending on whose hands it passed through to get from one spot to another.  In a purely Capitalistic world we would not have Department of Transportations, U.S. Postal Service, and many other Government run functions.  There would also be no limits to interest rates, and they would not be set by the government but would simply be whatever someone is willing to pay.  You could buy a lemon from Ford that was manufactured just a week ago, and the warranty could not cover it.  A purely Capitalistic economy has no laws governing the economy like we have today. 

So in truth the only system that works is variations of Socialism.

I fully understood exactly what he was referring to and my statement still stands. I must disagree with your assessment on a communistic economy. Communism as an economic system is only good for government, not for the people. It gives those in power the ability to be rich and the rich to be in power. It prevents those that are living in poverty from getting anywhere beyond poverty.

I also disagree with your statements on Christ. He did not advocate the government taking care of the poor but rather those of the body of Christ to do so. Nor did he teach that all property belongs to the government. He taught that we should not be greedy and want more than is necessary for life and to share the rest with others, this is true. This is not a socialist ideology although the socialists teach that it is. In a socialistic society the people own nothing not even the clothes on their back or themselves either for that matter.

A capitalist society did work in the U.S. for many years until government started getting involved in business and in peoples private lives. Since then it has been one big mess.

Roger, that sound like CCP (Chinese Communist Party), I will be on front seats on that judgment day.
Sorry, but I only hear little from Soviet Union history, except the history of WW2.

Thanks Jerry, I'm almost understand it, but What is the differents between Communism and Socialism?
And is it pure capitalist came from The words of God?(http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff133/onionethan/onion_Emoticons/019_.gif)

That explain, why most Christ followers don't supports it.

Communism in and of itself is not linked to government.  And you could have a communistic economy under a democratic form of government, where the people vote on what is best way to distribute the "wealth".  It is quite common to equate an economic system with a type of government because many governments attempt to implement what suits them best.  One has to remember and understand that the Soviet Union did not have communism as an economic system, they had socialism.  Although Ole Mac drilled it into the hearts of that generation that they were Communists, and it was equated as their type of government.  However their government was actually Totalitarian. 

I did not say that Christ advocated that government take care of the poor.  I said that Jesus mentality of how we as individuals (small scale) should think somewhat communistic.  In that we should be more than willing to give what we have to those that have less, and I am sorry that is a very communistic mentality when it comes to economics.  And remember we are talking economic systems which are different than governmental systems. 

And PR I am sorry to say that a pure capitalist system has never existed in this country.  Prior to our own establishment of our country we were part of England's mercantile system.  And once we started our own country, the moment we placed any sort of tax, tariff, regulation, or anything else on a product or service we were no longer a purely capitalistic economic system.  And we placed tariff's on things from the start. 

Ultimately by definition we would say that we are a mixed economic system with capitalistic tendencies.   But we cannot say we are a pure capitalistic society anymore than we could actually say the Soviet Union was really communistic.

I guess we will just have to disagree on this. You have given a great textbook definition of these different economies. Unfortunately what is in textbooks and what meets reality are two different things. History has proven that purely socialistic economies do get run by the government and not by the "people" as all businesses and products are owned and controlled by the government (the few) even though it is said differently. The poor do get poorer under socialism/communism.

That I agree with and even stated such :)

However the differentiator is also that the economic system is not the "evil" part, it is the government that wields it.  It is technically possible to have a totalitarian government with a capitalistic economy...although would be very hard pressed to do so.  Just as you can technically have a democratic government that is elected by the people, but an economy that is communism in that the elected officials are the ones deciding who gets what and what is to be produced, etc. 

Brothers,

I wanted to offer two cents worth on this one. How communism, socialism, and Marxism are defined in a dictionary doesn't concern me. Any student of history will immediately associate them with the mass murder of over 130 million people, so this would be the reality and anything else would be moot. I would simply combine all three and refer to them with one name, EVIL! This makes it a real simple and accurate reflection of history.

I agree completely...however one cannot judge something always by it's relationship with something else.  Otherwise most people would relate Christians to the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the Salem Witch Trials....

They already do.  ;) ;D ;D

However we are talking apples and oranges here. Besides what was wrong with the Crusades other than the misrepresentations and falsehoods given to it by liberals.

Well Pizza, here is little bit more on Russia. This is off my World War 2 forum, I posted this about 2 years ago. Though the forum is now mostly dead.

After World War II, the International Military Tribunal was established in Nuremberg to try the leaders of Nazi Germany for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Crimes against peace involved initiating a war of aggression. War crimes involved: murder, ill-treatment, or deportation either of civilians or prisoners of war. Crimes against humanity involved: murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against any civilians before or during war, and also persecution on political, racial or religious grounds. These acts, the charter of the Tribunal stated, were crimes "whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated". The Nazis were also guilty of the ultimate crime - the crime of genocide. After a thorough investigation, most of the defendants were convicted by the Tribunal of one or more of these horrific crimes and duly punished.

In a bizarre twist of fate, the Soviets, who were also guilty of all these crimes and therefore should have been in the dock alongside the Nazis, sat in righteous judgement upon them.
In regard to Poland alone, the list of Soviet crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II is very long indeed.

It includes - the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret Protocol for the partition of Poland.

The invasion and occupation in September 1939 of Eastern Poland, an area containing eight out of sixteen Poland's prewar provinces and representing 52 percent of Polish soil with over 13 million people.

The consequent breaking of two bilateral treaties with Poland, namely - the 1921 Treaty of Riga and the 1932 Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, renewed in 1934 for an additional ten years; moreover, as a member (since 1934) of the League of Nations, the Soviet Union violated at least three multilateral pacts as well.

The gratuitous handing over of Wilno and the Wilno region to Lithuania in exchange for allowing the Soviets to have military bases in that country.

The rigged plebiscites on the basis of which the occupied Polish territories were incorporated into the Belorussian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR.

The wholesale looting of Polish raw materials, agricultural produce and both movable and immovable goods to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

The wrecking of the Polish economy and the banking system.

The subversion of the Polish educational system, the arts, and the free press.

The trampling underfoot of human rights, including the freedoms of free speech, assembly and worship.

The confiscation of all Polish private and state landed property.

The exorbitant taxation without representation.

The four massive and other, less-known smaller deportations of entire Polish families to the Gulag.

The massive arrests of so-called counterrevolutionaries and anti-Soviet elements.

The internment of Polish POWs in forced-labour camps in occupied Eastern Poland and the USSR.

The 1940 cold-blooded execution and burial in mass graves in Katyn, Mednoye and Kharkov of 21 857 Polish prisoners (this exact number of those murdered comes from a 1959 KGB memorandum from Aleksandr Shelepin to Nikita Khruschev and represents the total number of executions during the April-May 1940 action, including 7300 persons murdered in Belorussia and Ukraine). The relatives of the victims in the Soviet-occupied part of Poland were subjected to one of the most severe repressions - deportation to the Gulag. In postwar Poland, they were not allowed to speak of the manner in which their loved ones died, and had to mourn them in complete silence.

The recently-discovered graves filled with Polish corpses near Tavda and Tomsk, east of the Ural Mountains.

The forced death marches to the interior of the Soviet Union following the June 1941 German invasion.

The massive, cold-blooded executions of thousands of prisoners in occupied Eastern Poland in the first days of that invasion.

The establishment of a communist party in Nazi-occupied Poland in early 1942 with orders to destabilize the Polish Home Army by denouncing its members to the Gestapo.

The Moscow 1943 order to combat the Polish underground with "every possible means".

The establishment in 1943 of the Moscow-based Union of Polish Patriots to take over the Polish government after the war.

The deliberate withholding of material and military assistance to the defenders of Warsaw during the 1944 uprising.

Stalin's 1944 order to liquidate the members of all Polish underground forces, which resulted in the execution of thousands of Polish soldiers and the arrest and deportation of tens of thousands to the interior of the Soviet Union.

The luring of sixteen Polish leaders to Moscow in March, 1945 and their show trial.

These, and similar Soviet actions cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens throughout the war and caused indescribable pain and sufferings to millions more. Yet as of today, sixty years after the end of World War II, not a single Russian official or researcher that I can name, has had the courage to own up to the fact that during World War II the Soviet Union was no better than Nazi Germany; that it was in large measure responsible for the outbreak of World War II; and that its sinister ideology continued to plague the world, and Poland in particular, for years after that war was over.

Most of the first couple of crusades had admirable intentions.  However many of the later crusades were truly simply to wage war, make a name, cement a position with the throne, or boredom (redirect the focus to something other than the poverty of the times). 

That, too, has been a misconception that has been placed in our textbooks just as the "fact' of evolution. has been. It has been a battle to make Christianity look bad in the eyes of the world.

Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. The Crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to have been the epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black stain on the history of the Catholic Church in particular and Western civilization in general. A breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to the peaceful Middle East and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins. For variations on this theme, one need not look far. See, for example, Steven Runciman’s famous three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, or the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones. Both are terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining.

So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion—has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.

With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed’s death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.

That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.

Pope Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war. Why did they do it? The answer to that question has been badly misunderstood. In the wake of the Enlightenment, it was usually asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands and ne’er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity to rob and pillage in a faraway land. The Crusaders’ expressed sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and love for God were obviously not to be taken seriously. They were only a front for darker designs.

During the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have demolished that contrivance. Scholars have discovered that crusading knights were generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap. Even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade. They did so not because they expected material wealth (which many of them had already) but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Europe is littered with thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments, charters in which these men still speak to us today if we will listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing booty if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.

Urban II gave the Crusaders two goals, both of which would remain central to the eastern Crusades for centuries. The first was to rescue the Christians of the East. As his successor, Pope Innocent III, later wrote:

How does a man love according to divine precept his neighbor as himself when, knowing that his Christian brothers in faith and in name are held by the perfidious Muslims in strict confinement and weighed down by the yoke of heaviest servitude, he does not devote himself to the task of freeing them? ...Is it by chance that you do not know that many thousands of Christians are bound in slavery and imprisoned by the Muslims, tortured with innumerable torments?

"Crusading," Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith has rightly argued, was understood as an "an act of love"—in this case, the love of one’s neighbor. The Crusade was seen as an errand of mercy to right a terrible wrong. As Pope Innocent III wrote to the Knights Templar, "You carry out in deeds the words of the Gospel, ‘Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends.’"

The second goal was the liberation of Jerusalem and the other places made holy by the life of Christ. The word crusade is modern. Medieval Crusaders saw themselves as pilgrims, performing acts of righteousness on their way to the Holy Sepulcher. The Crusade indulgence they received was canonically related to the pilgrimage indulgence. This goal was frequently described in feudal terms. When calling the Fifth Crusade in 1215, Innocent III wrote:


cont'd

Consider most dear sons, consider carefully that if any temporal king was thrown out of his domain and perhaps captured, would he not, when he was restored to his pristine liberty and the time had come for dispensing justice look on his vassals as unfaithful and traitors...unless they had committed not only their property but also their persons to the task of freeing him? ...And similarly will not Jesus Christ, the king of kings and lord of lords, whose servant you cannot deny being, who joined your soul to your body, who redeemed you with the Precious Blood...condemn you for the vice of ingratitude and the crime of infidelity if you neglect to help Him?

The reconquest of Jerusalem, therefore, was not colonialism but an act of restoration and an open declaration of one’s love of God. Medieval men knew, of course, that God had the power to restore Jerusalem Himself—indeed, He had the power to restore the whole world to His rule. Yet as St. Bernard of Clairvaux preached, His refusal to do so was a blessing to His people:

Again I say, consider the Almighty’s goodness and pay heed to His plans of mercy. He puts Himself under obligation to you, or rather feigns to do so, that He can help you to satisfy your obligations toward Himself.... I call blessed the generation that can seize an opportunity of such rich indulgence as this.

It is often assumed that the central goal of the Crusades was forced conversion of the Muslim world. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the perspective of medieval Christians, Muslims were the enemies of Christ and His Church. It was the Crusaders’ task to defeat and defend against them. That was all. Muslims who lived in Crusader-won territories were generally allowed to retain their property and livelihood, and always their religion. Indeed, throughout the history of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, Muslim inhabitants far outnumbered the Catholics. It was not until the 13th century that the Franciscans began conversion efforts among Muslims. But these were mostly unsuccessful and finally abandoned. In any case, such efforts were by peaceful persuasion, not the threat of violence.

The Crusades were wars, so it would be a mistake to characterize them as nothing but piety and good intentions. Like all warfare, the violence was brutal (although not as brutal as modern wars). There were mishaps, blunders, and crimes. These are usually well-remembered today. During the early days of the First Crusade in 1095, a ragtag band of Crusaders led by Count Emicho of Leiningen made its way down the Rhine, robbing and murdering all the Jews they could find. Without success, the local bishops attempted to stop the carnage. In the eyes of these warriors, the Jews, like the Muslims, were the enemies of Christ. Plundering and killing them, then, was no vice. Indeed, they believed it was a righteous deed, since the Jews’ money could be used to fund the Crusade to Jerusalem. But they were wrong, and the Church strongly condemned the anti-Jewish attacks.

Fifty years later, when the Second Crusade was gearing up, St. Bernard frequently preached that the Jews were not to be persecuted:

Ask anyone who knows the Sacred Scriptures what he finds foretold of the Jews in the Psalm. "Not for their destruction do I pray," it says. The Jews are for us the living words of Scripture, for they remind us always of what our Lord suffered.... Under Christian princes they endure a hard captivity, but "they only wait for the time of their deliverance."

Nevertheless, a fellow Cistercian monk named Radulf stirred up people against the Rhineland Jews, despite numerous letters from Bernard demanding that he stop. At last Bernard was forced to travel to Germany himself, where he caught up with Radulf, sent him back to his convent, and ended the massacres.

It is often said that the roots of the Holocaust can be seen in these medieval pogroms. That may be. But if so, those roots are far deeper and more widespread than the Crusades. Jews perished during the Crusades, but the purpose of the Crusades was not to kill Jews. Quite the contrary: Popes, bishops, and preachers made it clear that the Jews of Europe were to be left unmolested. In a modern war, we call tragic deaths like these "collateral damage." Even with smart technologies, the United States has killed far more innocents in our wars than the Crusaders ever could. But no one would seriously argue that the purpose of American wars is to kill women and children.

By any reckoning, the First Crusade was a long shot. There was no leader, no chain of command, no supply lines, no detailed strategy. It was simply thousands of warriors marching deep into enemy territory, committed to a common cause. Many of them died, either in battle or through disease or starvation. It was a rough campaign, one that seemed always on the brink of disaster. Yet it was miraculously successful. By 1098, the Crusaders had restored Nicaea and Antioch to Christian rule. In July 1099, they conquered Jerusalem and began to build a Christian state in Palestine. The joy in Europe was unbridled. It seemed that the tide of history, which had lifted the Muslims to such heights, was now turning.

But it was not. When we think about the Middle Ages, it is easy to view Europe in light of what it became rather than what it was. The colossus of the medieval world was Islam, not Christendom. The Crusades are interesting largely because they were an attempt to counter that trend. But in five centuries of crusading, it was only the First Crusade that significantly rolled back the military progress of Islam. It was downhill from there.

When the Crusader County of Edessa fell to the Turks and Kurds in 1144, there was an enormous groundswell of support for a new Crusade in Europe. It was led by two kings, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, and preached by St. Bernard himself. It failed miserably. Most of the Crusaders were killed along the way. Those who made it to Jerusalem only made things worse by attacking Muslim Damascus, which formerly had been a strong ally of the Christians. In the wake of such a disaster, Christians across Europe were forced to accept not only the continued growth of Muslim power but the certainty that God was punishing the West for its sins. Lay piety movements sprouted up throughout Europe, all rooted in the desire to purify Christian society so that it might be worthy of victory in the East.

Crusading in the late twelfth century, therefore, became a total war effort. Every person, no matter how weak or poor, was called to help. Warriors were asked to sacrifice their wealth and, if need be, their lives for the defense of the Christian East. On the home front, all Christians were called to support the Crusades through prayer, fasting, and alms. Yet still the Muslims grew in strength. Saladin, the great unifier, had forged the Muslim Near East into a single entity, all the while preaching jihad against the Christians. In 1187 at the Battle of Hattin, his forces wiped out the combined armies of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem and captured the precious relic of the True Cross. Defenseless, the Christian cities began surrendering one by one, culminating in the surrender of Jerusalem on October 2. Only a tiny handful of ports held out.

The response was the Third Crusade. It was led by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of the German Empire, King Philip II Augustus of France, and King Richard I Lionheart of England. By any measure it was a grand affair, although not quite as grand as the Christians had hoped. The aged Frederick drowned while crossing a river on horseback, so his army returned home before reaching the Holy Land. Philip and Richard came by boat, but their incessant bickering only added to an already divisive situation on the ground in Palestine. After recapturing Acre, the king of France went home, where he busied himself carving up Richard’s French holdings. The Crusade, therefore, fell into Richard’s lap. A skilled warrior, gifted leader, and superb tactician, Richard led the Christian forces to victory after victory, eventually reconquering the entire coast. But Jerusalem was not on the coast, and after two abortive attempts to secure supply lines to the Holy City, Richard at last gave up. Promising to return one day, he struck a truce with Saladin that ensured peace in the region and free access to Jerusalem for unarmed pilgrims. But it was a bitter pill to swallow. The desire to restore Jerusalem to Christian rule and regain the True Cross remained intense throughout Europe.

cont'd

The Crusades of the 13th century were larger, better funded, and better organized. But they too failed. The Fourth Crusade (1201-1204) ran aground when it was seduced into a web of Byzantine politics, which the Westerners never fully understood. They had made a detour to Constantinople to support an imperial claimant who promised great rewards and support for the Holy Land. Yet once he was on the throne of the Caesars, their benefactor found that he could not pay what he had promised. Thus betrayed by their Greek friends, in 1204 the Crusaders attacked, captured, and brutally sacked Constantinople, the greatest Christian city in the world. Pope Innocent III, who had previously excommunicated the entire Crusade, strongly denounced the Crusaders. But there was little else he could do. The tragic events of 1204 closed an iron door between Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, a door that even today Pope John Paul II has been unable to reopen. It is a terrible irony that the Crusades, which were a direct result of the Catholic desire to rescue the Orthodox people, drove the two further—and perhaps irrevocably—apart.

The remainder of the 13th century’s Crusades did little better. The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221) managed briefly to capture Damietta in Egypt, but the Muslims eventually defeated the army and reoccupied the city. St. Louis IX of France led two Crusades in his life. The first also captured Damietta, but Louis was quickly outwitted by the Egyptians and forced to abandon the city. Although Louis was in the Holy Land for several years, spending freely on defensive works, he never achieved his fondest wish: to free Jerusalem. He was a much older man in 1270 when he led another Crusade to Tunis, where he died of a disease that ravaged the camp. After St. Louis’s death, the ruthless Muslim leaders, Baybars and Kalavun, waged a brutal jihad against the Christians in Palestine. By 1291, the Muslim forces had succeeded in killing or ejecting the last of the Crusaders, thus erasing the Crusader kingdom from the map. Despite numerous attempts and many more plans, Christian forces were never again able to gain a foothold in the region until the 19th century.

One might think that three centuries of Christian defeats would have soured Europeans on the idea of Crusade. Not at all. In one sense, they had little alternative. Muslim kingdoms were becoming more, not less, powerful in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The Ottoman Turks conquered not only their fellow Muslims, thus further unifying Islam, but also continued to press westward, capturing Constantinople and plunging deep into Europe itself. By the 15th century, the Crusades were no longer errands of mercy for a distant people but desperate attempts of one of the last remnants of Christendom to survive. Europeans began to ponder the real possibility that Islam would finally achieve its aim of conquering the entire Christian world. One of the great best-sellers of the time, Sebastian Brant’s The Ship of Fools, gave voice to this sentiment in a chapter titled "Of the Decline of the Faith":

            Our faith was strong in th’ Orient,
            It ruled in all of Asian
            In Moorish lands and Africa.
            But now for us these lands are gone
            ’Twould even grieve the hardest stone....
            Four sisters of our Church you find,
            They’re of the patriarchic kind:
            Constantinople, Alexandria,
            Jerusalem, Antiochia.
            But they’ve been forfeited and sacked
            And soon the head will be attacked.

Of course, that is not what happened. But it very nearly did. In 1480, Sultan Mehmed II captured Otranto as a beachhead for his invasion of Italy. Rome was evacuated. Yet the sultan died shortly thereafter, and his plan died with him. In 1529, Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to Vienna. If not for a run of freak rainstorms that delayed his progress and forced him to leave behind much of his artillery, it is virtually certain that the Turks would have taken the city. Germany, then, would have been at their mercy.

Yet, even while these close shaves were taking place, something else was brewing in Europe—something unprecedented in human history. The Renaissance, born from a strange mixture of Roman values, medieval piety, and a unique respect for commerce and entrepreneurialism, had led to other movements like humanism, the Scientific Revolution, and the Age of Exploration. Even while fighting for its life, Europe was preparing to expand on a global scale. The Protestant Reformation, which rejected the papacy and the doctrine of indulgence, made Crusades unthinkable for many Europeans, thus leaving the fighting to the Catholics. In 1571, a Holy League, which was itself a Crusade, defeated the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto. Yet military victories like that remained rare. The Muslim threat was neutralized economically. As Europe grew in wealth and power, the once awesome and sophisticated Turks began to seem backward and pathetic—no longer worth a Crusade. The "Sick Man of Europe" limped along until the 20th century, when he finally expired, leaving behind the present mess of the modern Middle East.

From the safe distance of many centuries, it is easy enough to scowl in disgust at the Crusades. Religion, after all, is nothing to fight wars over. But we should be mindful that our medieval ancestors would have been equally disgusted by our infinitely more destructive wars fought in the name of political ideologies. And yet, both the medieval and the modern soldier fight ultimately for their own world and all that makes it up. Both are willing to suffer enormous sacrifice, provided that it is in the service of something they hold dear, something greater than themselves. Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts. The ancient faith of Christianity, with its respect for women and antipathy toward slavery, not only survived but flourished. Without the Crusades, it might well have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam’s rivals, into extinction.

THANKS PASTOR ROGER!

That was a lot of information in a small package. As Christians, we should know that there will be wars and rumors of wars until the SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. ONLY GOD has the power to make peace, and only GOD has the appropriate attributes to GOVERN over the peoples of the earth.

Until then, there will be horrible atrocities effecting great hosts of people. People of morals, conscience, and of GOD will have to determine whether to sit and do nothing or get up and go to stop it. The atrocities I speak about are happening right now, and they effect millions of people - many of them completely innocent. Some of the atrocities are as basic as starving helpless people to death or otherwise killing them in the cause of genocide. The question should eventually arise:  is there a time when decent people have some moral obligation to do something about it? This sounds like an EASY question, but it apparently isn't in these confusing times that we live in. Should this question be easier for Christians to answer? YES - I think it should be! Has GOD ever led or sent HIS People into Battle? MOST OBVIOUSLY YES!

Thanks, Roger, I ever take notes (Copy and paste, of course), but where the reference? So when the fools will ask us, where we got it from.

Back to topic, (http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff133/onionethan/onion_Emoticons/080_.gif)

What is the differents between Communism and Socialism?

And is it pure capitalist came from The words of God?

I'll make another topic later.....(http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff133/onionethan/onion_Emoticons/085_.gif)
the title is "Christophobia".

For some excellent information on the Crusades try "The New Concise History of the Crusades"  by Thomas F. Madden or "A Concise History of the Crusades (Critical Issues in History)"  by Thomas F. Madden

There is a lot of debate as to what communism and socialism is even among the communist and socialists. As most history shows communism is nothing more than a more extreme version of socialism. In either case they are both systems that lead to total domination of the people by the government.


No. God does not advocate any type of economic system in the Bible. He did tell us that we should provide for the poor which many take as being socialism but it is not the case either.

No misconceptions on the part of the crusades.  Even as you pointed out in the information you had there.  The first few crusades were largely supported by the Church at the time.  Funded, blessed, and sanctioned.  The later crusades mostly were organized, funded, and operated by kings of the region. 

We also know that we as Christians understand that although Jerusalem does hold a special meaning in our hearts it is strictly a piece of land.  It has religious significance but does not hold any "spiritual" significance.  This is true today just as it was true 1000 years ago. 

I also understand the violent spread of Islam in the region.  And that initial crusades were to halt that aggression.  But even after Richard had succeeded in negotiating peace with Saladin, that lasted only a generation if not less before some different kings rallied the troops again.  Europe was not in pleasant times during this period at the beginning.  Europe was still coming out of the downfall of the Roman Empire.  One of the unifying factors of this time was the Catholic Church.  It was also during this period that the Catholic Church started to exert itself as a temporal authority, independent of the secular kings, over all of the Christian nations.  Thus birthing the Holy Roman Empire. 

The crusades were not simple acts of defense against the growing nation of Islam.  It also acted as a means for the Holy Roman Empire to expand its reaches as well.  One must also remember that there were crusades that ventured into "barbarian" territories in Northern Europe that were not Muslim. 

I maintain that the crusades were started first and foremost to battle the aggression of Mohammed.  To stop the violent expansion of Islam.  However like most everything, eventually it goes bad.  I think that crusades were used as an excuse to gain political power, money, and influence.  Not every crusade was in retaliation to Muslim aggression.

I'll buy it, but I can't find on Amazon, but I did find The New Concise History of the Crusades (Critical Issues in History) and Crusades: The Illustrated History, they are both from Thomas F. Madden, is these okay? (http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff133/onionethan/onion_Emoticons/085_.gif)



What about Moses times? Y'll know, how the Lord given laws to his people?


BTW= I always thought crusades are corrupt people claim to be righteous. But thanks to you, I begin to understand and I had to rewrite the story for the game. (http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff133/onionethan/onion_Emoticons/058_.gif)

I guess, I watch history channel too much, BBC or whatever. I hope our homeland is not like CCP, who try change the history. (http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff133/onionethan/onion_Emoticons/071_.gif)


Edit: Sorry DreamWeaver, I didn't see your post about Russia, I just starting to reading and note it.