Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

Science and Witchcraft
it was then, perhaps different amounts of melanin in the skin;
different philosophies or religions; or maybe it's drug use, violent
crime, economic crisis, school prayer, or 'desecrating' (literally,
making unholy) the flag.
Whatever the problem, the quick fix is to shave a little freedom
off the Bill of Rights. Yes, in 1942, Japanese-Americans were
protected by the Bill of Rights, but we locked them up anyway -
after all, there was a war on. Yes, there are Constitutional
prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure, but we have
a war on drugs and violent crime is racing out of control. Yes,
there's freedom of speech, but we don't want foreign authors
here, spouting alien ideologies, do we? The pretexts change from
year to year, but the result remains the same: concentrating more
power in fewer hands and suppressing diversity of opinion - even
though experience plainly shows the danger of such a course of
action.
If we do not know what we're capable of, we cannot appreciate
measures taken to protect us from ourselves. I discussed the
European witch mania in the alien abduction context; I hope the
reader will forgive me for returning to it in its political context. It
is an aperture to human self-knowledge. If we focus on what was
considered acceptable evidence and a fair trial by the religious and
secular authorities in the fifteenth- to seventeenth-century witch
hunts, many of the novel and peculiar features of the eighteenthcentury
US Constitution and Bill of Rights become clear: including
trial by jury, prohibitions against self-incrimination and
against cruel and unusual punishment, freedom of speech and the
press, due process, the balance of powers and the separation of
Church and State.
Friedrich von Spee (pronounced 'Shpay') was a Jesuit priest
who had the misfortune to hear the confessions of those accused
of witchcraft in the German city of Wurzburg (see Chapter 7). In
1631, he published Cautio Criminalis (Precautions for Prosecutors),
which exposed the essence of this Church/State terrorism
against the innocent. Before he was punished he died of the
plague - as a parish priest serving the afflicted. Here is an excerpt
from his whistle-blowing book:
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