Salaried preachers, Catholics, and President Bush all have this in common: Reformer doesn't like them and isn't shy about sharing his dislike with the world. If you are one of those three, I'd recommend avoiding his posts. It'd prevent heartburn all around.

"By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."  -- Jesus

"I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.  The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me."  -  Jesus

I agree but there comes a time when one must fight fire with fire.

Broach,
Do you have any proof of this assertion?  I'm sure your intention is to be truthful, but I think you are referring to Thomas Müntzer,  not Martin Luther.  Luther did not encourage a revolt, nor did he "switch sides".  He actually admonished both sides to refrain from violence and encouraged a peaceful transition in German social conditions.

I teach it every year when I cover the Reformation and my textbook, which is used in the majority of history classes in the country, backs this up.

Broach,
Then it should be really easy for you to quote Luther to prove your assertion.  I'd like very much to see those quotes posted here, if you don't mind.
The history that I've read tells a different story, which is basically that both sides tried to claim Luther as their own.  Your post seems to be attributing a diabolicalism to Luther that I believe is unwarranted.
Thanks

The priesthood of all believers was never meant to make every man his own prophet. In several areas (Strassburg, Augsburg, Zurich, and Moravia), separate movements of Christian radicalism developed, some passive, some active. Under the inspiration of radical Lutherans who had turned apocalyptic, the latter sort spread their mystic millenarianism through Germany and the Low Countries, and goaded.ed Luther for support. Unlike Luther, these wanted to bring society, not just faith, under the law of the gospel. Some were even prepared to use force to bring the whole society to purity. Naturally, they attracted the lower classes in town and country. Theirs was a Utopian movement and also a vent for class bitterness. Others were less millenarian, suppressing the need to separate the church from worldly society, and emphasizing pacifism and the love-ethic. Luther fulminated against both branches as fiercely as the Catholics, but neither burnings, drownings, nor massacres seemed to halt their spread...

Luther was even more violent in his denunciation of the peasants who demanded ''liberty'' in social terms on the basis of scriptural authority' The German peasantry were in an ambivalent position in the 16th century. Rising prices were in their favor, but the gap between prices for agricultural produce and industrial equipment was growing instead of decreasing. Not that peasants needed many tools. But their returns were not as large or fast as the city merchant's returns, and the growing disparity was irksome. More trying than this, though, were the downward pressures foisted on them by the Knights and magnates. The Knights as a class were threatened with decline because their rents and services, being relatively fixed, fell behind climbing prices. They were eager to reimpose maximum obligations on a peasantry that was eager to escape them. The Peasants War the injustice and oppression of these landlords. Coming as it did in the early states of the Reformation, and encouraged as it was in some areas by convinced Anabaptists, it threatened to drown Luther's work in a torrent of civil strife. At first Luther was noncommittal; he recognized that many of the peasants' grievances were genuine, but as the peasants indulged in indiscriminate pillaging he realized the danger to his own cause and turned against them with extraordinary venom. Princes, he urged, could better merit heaven by smiting, slaying and stabbing rebellious subjects than by prayer. It was said that over 100,000 peasants were killed in battle or executed afterward, and crippling fines were laid upon those who escaped with their lives. From this time the peasantry ceased to count in German politics; princes and magnates had vindicated their power once and for all. Where the revolt had been most vigorous, in Bohemia and Austria, the savage reprisals alienated the peasantry from Luther and the decline of Lutheranism in southern Germany dates from the crushing defeat of the Revolt rather than from the Counter-Reformation.