Anyway, your discussion of wines has inspired me to have a nice Tokay before I go to sleep.

Are you talking per capita or in absolute terms?

The current copy of the OECD Yearbook I have to hand appears strangely reticent on this issue.

I put it to y’all that notions of class struggle and free market panceas are increasingly irrelevant in the strange new globalised world now emerging where our internet and telephony access machines are now made more cheaply in a centralised command economy like China then anywhere else while Bollywood offers far more chance of upward mobility than Broadway. A world where Brazil is the second largest producer of commuter aircraft and the first largest producer of transexuals.

The comforting certainies of the last century are withering up and burning off like a chequebook (remember them?) in a microwave.

Discussing Left and Right now is like debating the merits of the Burgundy and Rhine wines offered in the Hindenburg’s dining parlour as it wallows in to dock at Lakehurst Naval Air Station.

Nevertheless you could be right - more likely have an agenda - I couldn’t be bothered checking. If you want to make a case you’ll have to do better than that FaiChai - if that is your reaL name. You could start by clicking on the link to the edicts of Ashoka. You’ll find it right beneath the 5 line section labelled controversy in the wiki article which you have reproduced in full.

He’s simply an agent provocateur.

It’s especially silly when there are causal relationships between x and y.

Their arguments go this way:

“You can’t claim X is Y, because Z is a worse example of Y.” I caught CL pulling the same dumb stunt just the other day.

So what if Christians aren’t as brutish as Muslims? Does this make Christian brutishness more tolerable? Of course not.

Unfortunately, the Christian nightmare has been the burden of the West for a long time. Many more Westerners have been tortured to death by Christians than by Muslims. Those who remember this are rightly suspicious of any special pleading by Christians that they deserve better treatment than the average co-dependant of a homocidal maniac.

Does this make Muslim fanatics more tolerable? Of course not.

It’s just silly for LQ and his ilk to suggest otherwise.

Your nephew has some very interesting books. But perhaps either you or he coloured over the bit that indicated that the year the Edict of Milan of 312 was 13 years before the Council of Nicaea.

And perhaps you weren’t listening to your very well informed nephew when he told you that the Council of Nicaea is remarkable for its intolerance to heterodoxy within Christianity.

Your nephew may also inform you, if you ask him very politely, that this intra-Christian intolerance became quite a feature in Europe of oh, 1500 years or so.

Yes, you are indeed quite curious.

humanity’s first ever act of genocide

You’ve got to be kidding. The Romans did genocide better than most, and they’re just the earliest to leave historical records of their actions.

According to my nephew’s reader religious “toleration” was totally an invention of the Romans. In fact, Rome was the most multiculti civilization that has ever existed. There was some very brief and very minor state non-toleration of Christianity. However that was a political issue as the Christians rejected the authority of the state.

My nephew directs you to various Edicts of “Toleration” including the Edicat of Milan of 312. Hop to it!

Of course, the world’s first genocidally intolerant civilization was 7th century Islam. Muhammad committed humanity’s first ever act of genocide when he wiped out all the Jews of Medina. After that, cooler heads prevailed and infidels were spared the sword so long as they paid a tax, the jiziyah. This tax is still at the centre of the Islamist regimes today. Indeed, it is part of the Hamas charter’s plans for post Judeocide Israel

I am curious how Islam and Islamists fit into your “celebrating diversity” utopia.

Oh, how are your searches for the relevance of “terra nullius” to 18th century Australia coming along?