Richard Landes' Response to Gary North. Here Landes is answering criticisms made by Gary North, with specific application to Landes' view of millennialism in respect to Y2K.

Giants With Feet of Clay: On the Historiography of the Year 1000 (by Richard Landes). A really long discussion here of millennialism in many forms. Focuses on society approaching Year 1000. Interesting point of view.

Here are a couple of extracts from Landes' Response to Gary North:

"The 'conspiracy of silence' as you call it is really the cumulative effects of denial (medieval clerics were, by and large no less horrified at the thought of being farmers than Mr Moody is  indeed we have a poem by one of the great conservative bishops of the age horrified at the thought of bishops pushing the plow and singing the song of Adam [ie, 'when Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?'])."

"And now, as you yourself know better than anyone, its happening again, right under our noses. People, perfectly well educated, intelligent people, are capable of looking at Y2K and seeing nothing, or, more likely, of beginning to realize how serious the dangers are, and yet not saying anything about it, of looking over the edge of the abyss and stepping back wordlessly, or, as Peter de Jaeger says about the Europeans and the Euro  looking over the abyss and admiring the view. Denial is a profound part of the human experience and apocalyptic times merely intensify that tendency."

"In a nation of 13,000 noncompliant banks, 7,800 noncompliant power companies, and not one compliant Fortune 1000 company -- not to mention Japan's banks and Russia's missiles -- the absence of hysteria seems to be a product of the equivalent of high school cheerleading: 'Be calm, be cool, and be collected.' That was always the cheer adopted when the team was down 36 to 3."

I can understand this guy.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), December 11, 1999

Answers

Tom, Apparently the first two paragraphs are Landes and the last is Gary North--if I'm reading this correctly (?) Can you double check...?

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), December 11, 1999.

Mara, you're right. I got carried away, it seems. That last paragraph I quoted (In a nation of...etc.) is actually Landes' quoting Gary North.

He follows that up with

Although I may not agree with you on what will come of it all, I certainly think that we are dealing with serious denial here among most people.

which I intended to include in the first place.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), December 12, 1999.