--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: > > As intuitions are personal isn't Barry making a fair point > to stress that you can't compel others to adopt your view > so it's counter-productive to rabbit on about it.
Not to mention DUMB. :-) > He mentions the first arrival of Europeans in Japan. It's > not a period I know much about but I think you'll find it > was the Christians who were on the receiving end of the > (horrific) violence. In this case the Christians weren't > dishing it out; they made up for the oversight elsewhere. This is sadly not true. When the Portuguese and Spanish missionaries arrived in Japan and found that the "heathens" had no fuckin' interest in what these smelly furriners were trying to sell them, they *often* resorted to violence. The Portuguese missionaries occasionally killed people to "make an example" of them, and if that didn't work, they burned entire villages. The violence against *them* was in retribution for their acts. It was brutal, and effective; the Japanese threw their asses out of the country, and didn't allow more of these barbarians back in for centuries.
