Sorry, I have a terrible cold and I departed the Corner for a while. This came in last night from Mr. Velshi:
Dr Ledeen, I think your tone is unduly harsh and somewhat ungenerous. If you reread my email to Jonah Goldberg, I think you will realize that I am on your side and that there was no need to go after me personally.
Yes, I read Benedict’s speech; it was impolite of you to suggest that I had not simply because I said that a dialogue that was “set down…during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402″ was written in the 15th century. Oops, my mistake – off by a few years, or was I? I am sorry for offending your keen sense of history and pedantry.
Likewise, I recognize that most of Benedict’s speech did not have to do with Islam, but instead with Christianity’s embrace of human reason. Still, many of today’s Corner posts on the speech, as well as the depressingly fascistic response of many Muslims to it, focused on Benedict’s comments on Islam. I make no apologies for confining my remarks on Benedict’s speech to the factual basis of the popular response to it.
As for the remainder of your Corner post, please reread my email, and ask yourself if I questioned Benedict’s right to “state the obvious [that Islam’s domain was spread violently].” Although I disagree with that reading of Islamic history, and would love to debate this with you over a (free?) steak at one of your Lone Star steakhouses, nowhere in my email to Jonah did I question the right of Benedict to hold such views or express them.
I will however follow your advice and reread the Pope’s speech tonight. I am very interested in seeing how Benedict’s “call on behalf of human reason” can be reconciled with “strong words…for positivists and scientists” – who I normally treat as human reason’s apotheosis.