A Small Fisking

I don’t often fisk comments, but sometimes it has to be done. In response to yesterday’s well-received Game Plan essay, a reader calling himself “Dondo” wrote:

Thoughtful, considered essay. Deeply flawed, though. History has shown repeatedly that ideology beats force almost every time — from the Roman’s repression of Christ through the Inquisition to China’s repression of the Falung [sic] Gong, there are almost no exceptions.

“Almost no exceptions.” Except, you know, for the Napoleonic Wars, which ended the ideology of the divine right of kings. Or the American Civil War, which ended the ideology of southern slavery and (eventually, and not yet quite completely) the ideology of racial inferiority. Or the Second World War, which ridded the world of two ideologies