Do the Allies *need* to go on the offensive?

cralkhi wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:As long as the Orbital Bombardment System is neutralized, and the Inquisition is castrated, the Proscriptions are meaningless in any real and enforceable way. Charis can go its own way and teach heretical things like the scientific method and free-wheeling innovation. The rest of Safehold will have to "adapt or die."

It's not necessarily that simple - the people believe in the Proscriptions. In Old Charis, and maybe Chisholm etc. that could be weakened over time, but it would take a lot of time.

Cayleb and Sharleyan & the Inner Circle can't do anything that would turn their populace against them.

EDIT:

n7axw wrote: Also as the horror of what happened in Siddarmark sinks in and the lies the church has told become exposed, the credibility of the COGA is going to take a real hit as it becomes glaringly apparent that there is a real difference between God and the COGA.

In Charis, Chisholm, Corisande, Siddarmark sure. Elsewhere... I'm not so sure. Not all cultures automatically recoil from cruelty and brutality - consider Aztec human sacrifice or the Roman gladiatorial games - and the Punishment of Schueler is in their Holy Writ.

Remember that culture on Safehold began with a common template and gradually evolved away from it. Safehold still shares the Writ in common and would have absorbed many of the same values however it evolved and diverged in other ways.

The values and mores of earth, by way of contrast are at root home grown even though often influenced from the outside. That makes for a lot more variety than we find in Safehold.

As for the book of Schueler, no, it wasn't central for anybody until the Jihad. Its primary role would have been to scare people into compliance with the COGA, but its actual application would have only occasional and rare.

Don

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Weird Harold wrote:
[snip]

There will still be a lot of Temple Loyalists and their children indoctrinated with Temple Loyalist devotion to the Writ, . . .

[snip]

This is what I think, too. There will always be some people who prefer to believe what their accepted authority lays down, no matter what its internal inconsistencies and unwarranted assumptions are. And there will be others whose attitude can be summed up by "I've made my mind up, and don't confuse me with the facts."

The only thing you can do with folk like that is to manoeuvre them into a position where the damage they can do is minimised. Doing this is seldom if ever 100% successful.
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