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Such Men are Dangerous: The Fanatics of 1692 and 2004

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This book compares the men behind the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 to the Bush II Administration. The comparisons are distressingly close.

Massachusetts of the 1690s was a very rigid sort of place. Those in power were ideologues who believed that their version of Calvinism was the only way and the only truth. Everyone who came to Massachusetts was required by law to attend Puritan services. Belonging to any other church was forbidden, on pain of banishment or hanging. All dissent was equated to bonding with the devil. The Puritans believed you were "either with us or against us." Since Massachusetts thought itself a place where anyone could find work, poverty was considered a sign of general immorality and probable damnation.

America in 2004 is a place where those on the bottom are blamed instead of helped. Prisons are full of victims of poverty, and each year scores of Americans are legally executed. It stems from a point of view of self-seeking masquerading as righteousness, without regard for social justice. Selfishness is a virtue. Those who can't make it economically are wicked and contemptible. Today's leaders are as inhumane and self-righteous as those of 300 years ago.

Paul Wolfowitz and Minister Cotton Mather tried to emulate their famous fathers. They both also see only what they want to see, and are slippery and self-serving in argument. Deputy Governor William Stoughton and Donald Rumsfeld both hold rigid ideological views, lack humanity and mercy, and are war mongers and hypocrites. Stoughton and Dick Cheney are willing to bend their view of the world to accommodate their pursuit of wealth and power. Magistrate John Hathorne and Richard perle were not part of their respective elites, but they were the first to push their respective agendas. Governor William Phips and George Bush were intellectually lacking, but they did have a talent for forming alliances and cultivating people. They also had very foul mouths and furious tempers, and owed everything to family connections.

It's disheartening to know that Americans have evolved so little in 300 years. This is quite an eye-opener of a book. An interest in Massachusetts of the 1690s would be a big help, but this is still fascinating and thought-provoking. Highly recommended.

Such Men Are Dangerous: The Fanatics Of 1692 And 2004 is a chilling commentary that compares political figures such as Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush with the ideologues of 1692 colonial America who led the Salem witch hunts. Comparing the government's manipulations of American reactions to September 11th with the Puritans' twist on popular fear of "spectral" forces to commit murder and bolster their own wealth, Such Men Are Dangerous takes a bold stand but is chilling in its uncanny comparisons. A scathing expose that forces the reader to take a cold, hard look at America's current leaders.

Read this book! Whether you are a seething democrat, a bilious republican - or just a normal person - this book gives an historical perspective on the current day Bush administration by drawing parallels with the Salem Witch Trials and those who instigated them. The fear of the witch is replaced by the fear of the terrorist.

Frances Hill has created a powerful argument that draws the two regimes together through individual comparisons, and a minutely forensic approach in teasing out the similarities. Even the 'good' or 'believable' members of President Bush's and Governor Phips' teams are seen to be weak and pliable.

There is anger at the roughshod methods of both regimes; but anger tempered by incontrovertible facts. How has the US lost its way as a beacon of democratic freedom in the world? Why are the poorer being disadvantaged while the rich benefit?

Michael Moore may be funnier, but Frances Hill delivers a more devastating polemic.

The comparisons are uncanny; the initial outcomes chilling. The only question remaining is left at the very end... how will the world respond to the neocons' callous ministrations?

Who better than Frances Hill, an authority on the Salem Witch Hysteria, to recognize the chilling parallels between the men in power in 1692 and the Bush administration. Character by character, Frances Hill builds her case, describing in detail the self-righteous, greedy ideologues who led Massachusetts Bay Colony into the horror of 1692 and those who as early as September 17, 2001, began plans to invade Iraq.

When fanatics grab the rudder of the ship of state, is it a comfort to know we've been there before in history? Or just the reverse? This book, with its all-too-believable thesis that Cotton Mather and Paul Wolfowitz, for example, are separated by 400 years of history but not much else, offers little to comfort and much to concern the reader. Both then and now, the author suggests, a rabid 'religious' mindset spiced with personal greed has overpowered all other considerations, including justice and legality. What now? Let the present madness run its course to a 21st century equivalent of the carnage that followed the Salem witch trials? In the world today the aftermath is likely to be more devastating than the murdered innocents, abandoned farms, orphaned children and compromised justice system that followed Salem. Much more devastating. It has the potential to be apocalyptic.

This book should be taken with a medicinal dose of brandy.

There are quite a few good books about the Bush administration, some of which re-cover familiar territory. This one is different. Frances Hill, a noted journalist and historian, strives to find another time in American history when leadership took such bizarre twists, and has to go back to the witch trials of 1692. She shows, convincingly, that generations from now, Americans will look back in amazement at the wrong-headed turns of their country's history. That is, if America survives for future generations.

Veteran journalist and author of several books, Frances Hill offers her readers a compelling argument about the Bush Administration's follies in her latest book, Such Men Are Dangerous: The Fanatics of 1692 and 2004. Her premise is simple: there are distinct parallels between the Salem witch trials and the United States' present handling of the war against terrorism. Her somewhat lengthy descriptions of key players such as Increase and Cotton Mather, William Stoughton and John Hathorne in the late seventeenth century reveal her in-depth knowledge of that time period in American history. Where she falls short is in her portrayals of today's political figures such as Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W. Bush. The reader is left wanting more information, which may not be readily available, to determine why the Bush Administration is acting in such a manner today.

While her arguments may be weakened by the imbalance in treating the Salem witch trials in great detail and the war in Iraq, for instance, in under a few pages, the reader is left to wonder if there isn't some truth to Hill's assessment. A fanatical religious ideologue, Cotton Mather suffered from paranoia and an exaggerated sense of self. He strove his entire life to meet his father's expectations. In doing so, he went to great lengths, often persecuting others, to prove his own worthiness. Similarly, George W. Bush suffers from trying to please his father even now. The fact that he hates reading makes it all the stranger that, after learning about the attacks on the World Trade Center, Bush followed through with his reading aloud to a grade school class in Florida. The ridiculousness of his actions is underscored by his inability to think under pressure.

Hill's book shows her solid understanding of the subject matter. She would have made a stronger case if she had concentrated on the Bush Administration alone and had referred to 1692 occasionally. The reader is left dissatisfied in the end and wonders, along with the author, about what will happen next. It is, however, a great read for history buffs and politically concerned citizens of the world. I look forward to Frances Hill's next book.

Christine Louise Hohlbaum, American author of Diary of a Mother (2003), SAHM I Am (2005), and "American Housewife Abroad" at AnotherChapter.com, is a freelance writer living near Munich, Germany, with her husband and two children. Visit her Web site at: http://www.DiaryofaMother.com

This is a gripping book that offers a chilling historical perspective on the fanaticism of the Salem Witch Trials by bringing it, and the American experiment, full circle to the current madness of the Bush Administration. It is a history, an adventure story and a political dissection all in one.

The "Reader" from Austin, Texas obviously hasn't looked at this book. He says Frances Hill should have compared the recovered-memory advocates--not the Bush Administration--to the witch burners. He goes on to suggest this wasn't done because of "political correctness." Huh?

The problem is, that comparison has already been made, famously, by Mark Pendergrast, in his landmark book "Victims of Memory," which is published by the very same small press, Upper Access Books. In fact, Pendergrast is is quoted on the cover of "Such Men" with glowing praise for Hill's scholarship and insights.

Both of these authors have found frightening reminders of the witch craze in modern life, and both have expressed admiration for each other's work. The fact that they didn't both write the same exact book has to do with scholarship, not "political correctness."