The Crusades and reality

It is accepted modern orthodoxy to deride the Crusades and to claim that somehow Christians violated some type of moral or ethical code by engaging in the Crusade. Those who read this blog also know that I am progressive with regard to social causes, while being conservative with regard to moral causes. But, even that statement is misleading. I consider myself to be consistently pro-life, all the way through the social causes that are normally derided by committed Christian conservatives. But, one area in which I fully deny progressive / liberal orthodoxy is in the area of the Crusades.

You see, I am the son of a Spaniard. And, my heritage says that you fight the invader for hundreds of years, if necessary. What do I mean?

Spain was invaded by Moorish troops in 711 AD. The battle began. By 732, they were in Tours, France, where the Frankish leader, Charles Martel, defeated them. One of his sons, Pepin the Younger, is the father of Charlemagne, the first Western Emperor after the full fall of the Western Roman Empire. The East refused to accept Charlemagne as Emperor, which was one of the more irrelevant and silly moves in the history of the Roman Empire in the East. But, in the West, regardless of inappropriate political moves by the Eastern Emperor, the battle was joined against the invading Muslims. [Note: the East needs to repent of its attitude toward the situation of Western Europe and its first Holy Roman Emperor.]

And so my ancestors fought. From 732 through 1492, 750 years of time, we fought. We fought for our freedom. We fought for the right to be Roman Christians. At first we fought for the right to be Christians, but in the middle of our fight the Church split. And, our Christianity became Roman.  We fought for our language. We fought against the invader. We lost men. We lost population. Heroes, like El Cid, rose and fell on the field of battle. Death and the willingness to die became part of our history, our heritage, who we were.

But, we won. Against many modern attitudes that we should have given up, we won. Over 700 years of battle and we won! Sadly, our post-win reaction was to send people to another continent to conquer them, but we won! We behaved badly during, and after, the battle, but we won. My ancestors returned to being Christian. Because of the Great Schism, they became Roman Catholic, but they were their own country. They were not Muslim. They were not under the yoke of an enemy on another continent. They were free and Christian.

The Crusades were not fully wrong. Current liberal orthodoxy is fully wrong. We defended ourselves against an enemy and eventually defeated that enemy. We regained our freedom, though we handled it somewhat badly afterward. It is not wrong to defend one’s self against invaders, whether Islamic, British, colonial, etc.

But, this raises a question for Americans. Are Native Americans wrong to resist our conquest? Should not we honor them for resisting an illegal and immoral invasion? Here is the problem that Americans have. They wish to condemn current Muslims without condemning themselves. It is no wonder that progressives/liberals condemn conservatives. Conservatives want to have their cake and eat it too. It is either correct to oppose an invader who wishes to take over your culture, even if it takes hundreds of years, or it is not. If it is not correct, then Spain should be Muslim.

If if is correct to oppose an invader who wishes to take over your culture, even if it takes hundreds of years, then Native Americans are correct when they continue to oppose agreements imposed by the immoral conquerors. And, there is little doubt that we have been clearly immoral. The failure of USA Christians to fully repent for their utilitarian genocide is part of the reason why we wonder that God does not support us and our national Christian situation is becoming worse.

To go back to the Crusades, this means that the attempt to reclaim our original lands is, and was not, wrong. Though there were many actions that were wrong, the original thought was not wrong. Unless … . That is, unless you are willing to say that Christians should not complain about Muslims in the Middle East in the same way that Native Americans should not complain about the takeover of their lands. To complain about one, but not the other, is a illogical, inconsistent, and immoral thought. Yet, that is what too many Americans do. Somehow, we justify our violent genocidal takeover of what is now the USA, as we declare Muslims to be totally wrong. And, yet, we are somehow not hypocrites.

Spaniards and their descendants do not necessarily have the same moral conflict as liberal/progressive Americans. The Crusades were not fully immoral. Our multiple century fight was correct. And Native Americans have the right to fight for the next few centuries for their right to make independent choices. It is a contradiction to insist that Native Americans have no further rights while other peoples, particularly those under Islam, have those same rights.