In the internet age it is essential that one at least be aware of the question: “Why is this information being produced?”

In my youth, the guy who won the argument was the one who had library access. He would quote a book, which was by an expert. A person who could get a book published, and therefore that, on that day and on that playground, was the final opinion.

It never occurred to the armies of the religious wars that there was any opinion but their Only True Faith.
On the other side, those who fought for Islam had exactly the same total monomania. They had seen the Books. They had heard the Wise Men.

What happened to people on both sides during the Crusades is an object lesson as to why you should ask, “Why was this information produced?”

The same attitude on both sides caused all the religious wars and prosecutions in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe, climaxed by the Thirty Year’s War during which the population of Germany dropped as much as it did after the Great Plague.

And what caused it all was simply unquestioned information.

The experience of the religious wars was to our Founding Fathers the essence of the lessons of history. That is the reason the first thing demanded was a guarantee of freedom of press and of the tiny press of their day which no one owned and controlled.

No other country on earth has our first amendment.

Least of all Europe, where the religious wars took place.