Tea at Trianon: The Postmodern Family

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, February 18, 2019

The Postmodern Family

From Return to Order:

A recent study conducted by a British organization called OnePoll finds that one-third of Americans cannot even name all four of their grandparents. If this is accurate, far fewer know where their grandparents were born, the nature of the work that they did, or the things that they found interesting. Reflecting on this poll brings to mind the Fourth Commandment: “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be long-lived upon the land which the Lord thy God will give thee.” (Exodus 20:12)

What does it mean to honor your father and mother in the “postmodern” world? During the sixties, the family was redefined as a “nuclear” social unit composed of individuals not necessarily married. This was one of the ill effects of the sexual revolution. The roots of this redefinition go back to the Industrial Revolution. Before large-scale migration, farm villages and small towns were really networks of relatives. Aunts, uncles, and cousins of various degrees of kinship were also friends, neighbors, and the members of the parish church. The admonition to honor one’s parents was easily extended to all of the elders in the community. Once people traveled to industrial centers in search of jobs, that sense of family disintegrated. When a man left his village, he took his wife and his children with him. In the new place, everyone was a stranger. By the mid-twentieth century, such movements happened every generation – maybe several times during a single generation. (Read more.)