Marie-Antoinette and Music

From Royal Central:

Whilst musical talent in the eighteenth century was judged to be an appropriate feminine accomplishment, Marie Antoinette’s personal relationship with music was a special one, which reached far beyond mere natural inclination. Music proved to be in many ways, perpetually present, like a main character in her life story, giving parallel to key events or lending them at least, poignant expression. Her love and patronage of the music of the composer Christoph Willibald Glück, whose works she did much to promote in France, reaches back even further than Marie Antoinette’s birth, because the composer’s official inauguration in the role of composer of “theatrical and chamber music” took place in 1755 at a court ball at the summer palace of Laxenburg, when her mother, Maria Theresia, was roughly three months pregnant with her, the Empress’s fifteenth child.

When Archduchess Maria Antonia (“Antoine”) of Austria, the future Marie Antoinette was recorded as singing a French song as early as three-years-old, for the name day of her father, the Holy Roman Emperor Franz I, in 1759. She also met the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who gave his first concert at Schönbrunn Palace, the magnificent Habsburg summer residence on the outskirts of Vienna, in 1762, in the presence of the Empress and the Imperial Family, with the boy prodigy from Salzburg performing on the harpsichord. As Austrian Archduchess, Marie Antoinette’s young love of music was expressed in the painting of her at the spinet by Franz Xaver Wagenschön, a delightful image now part of the Kunsthistorisches Museum collections. The art is arresting, showing Marie Antoinette poised to turn the pages of her music, with one hand delicately resting on the keys. She is dressed in a day dress of blue satin, trimmed with fur, possibly of sable. It is proof, in any was needed, of her early commitment to what would be, a lifelong relationship. (Read more.)

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The SAVE Act

 From Alexander Muse at Amuse on X:

In the modern Senate, the illusion of the indefinite filibuster is sustained by a set of informal practices. Leaders usually file cloture before real debate begins. Unanimous consent agreements limit speech. Legislative days are routinely allowed to lapse. Quorum calls are used as naps rather than tools. These practices create the impression that the minority can talk forever. In reality, they can do so only with majority acquiescence.

Suppose the SAVE Act is brought to the floor without a cloture motion. Democrats announce a talking filibuster. What happens next is governed not by myth but by arithmetic and biology. To delay the vote, Democratic senators must continuously speak. They may not sit. They may not leave the chamber without yielding the floor. They may not sleep in any meaningful way. Rule XIX limits each senator to two speeches per legislative day. Germaneness disputes can be raised. The presiding officer has discretion. These constraints matter little at first. They matter enormously after exhaustion sets in.

Among Senate scholars and parliamentary historians, there is a strong consensus on how long such an effort can last. Without cloture, but with a continuous legislative day, a determined minority can realistically sustain debate somewhere between 24 and 72 hours. That range appears repeatedly in academic analyses, memoirs of former parliamentarians, and interviews with ex-leaders from both parties. Beyond that window, collapse becomes likely unless the majority blinks for political reasons.

Why this ceiling? The first constraint is physical. Speaking continuously is far more taxing than most imagine. Cognitive degradation begins well before total physical collapse. Even exceptional speakers deteriorate quickly. Huey Long, operating alone and with extraordinary rhetorical stamina, lasted roughly 15 hours. Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour filibuster remains an outlier, dependent on careful preparation and circumstances that no longer exist. No modern Senate has replicated it under hostile floor management.

Rotation helps, but only briefly. To sustain a 72-hour filibuster, Democrats would need dozens of senators willing to speak, disciplined handoffs with no gaps, physical presence in Washington at all times, and constant readiness through nights and weekends. This is not merely difficult. It is historically unprecedented outside moments of existential crisis. Modern caucuses are not built for this level of coordination. Senators have committees, media obligations, and human limits. The bench empties faster than the models assume. (Read more.)

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The Sad and Sterile World of Tinder

 From Chronicles:

If one wanted to get a crash course in the deterioration of the contemporary American urban collective consciousness, this visual sociology lesson would be a good place to start. The images reveal, in stark and unmistakable terms, how far the assault on our normative standards of good and evil has advanced in our cities. They depict a world in which reproductive heterosexuality is extinct, and all expressions of sexuality deviate from established baselines of biological and cultural patterns. The basic theme is the hatred for and desired destruction of everything normal or wholesome and the embrace of the freakish to replace these things.

One immediately notes in these images the complete absence of any normal-looking people. Everyone appears to be from a distant planet on which garish plumage, like something you’d see on the monstrous birds of a nightmare, is standard. In the dream world of Tinder, everyone has orange hair and is gender-nonspecific. Similarly, they dress as though they are either attending a rave or are working as extras on a science-fiction movie set in a post-apocalyptic megacity. 

In addition to the images, each ad  was adorned with a trite phrase. These bits of text say much about the culture of the people who are the target consumer group for this service.

Consider “Comfortable Silences.” In this image two (apparently) women are driving in a pink convertible through a desert. Silence. The desert. Cactuses and shrub grass. These are supposed to be the images of “love” in our culture. Warm, human, and verbal communication is apparently no longer the goal. No, the perfect relationship is one in which you are not required to interact in a substantive way with your “partner,” but can instead continue to live an alienated life, but now alone “together” with another alienated alone person to whom you do not speak or even look at. Desolation and emotional isolation, all while sitting in physical contact with another human being, is the message of the image. (Read more.)

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Queen Henrietta Maria's Dwarf

Stepanie Mann quotes Fr. Rutler about Queen Henrietta Maria's devoted retainer:

In the saga of Catholic curiosities, unique is the smallest known adult Catholic, Sir Jeffrey Hudson who as a man was eighteen inches tall. His parents and siblings were of average height. He was not a typical dwarf, inasmuch as he was perfectly proportioned in every way, only tiny—more of what is called vernacularly a midget, and technically a pituitary dwarf, conditioned by a lack of growth hormone. But his hypopituitarism was without precedent in England and his perfect and delicate miniature size distinguished him from the common Continental court dwarves of his day. As a possible portent, he was born on June 14, 1619 in England’s smallest county, Rutland, whose motto is “Multum in Parvo,” or, Much in Little as David Cameron might try to translate it. His father raised cattle, particularly bulls for baiting, for the Duke of Buckingham. When little Jeffrey failed to grow, he was taken in to the Buckingham household as a “rarity of nature.” He was seven years old and when King Charles I and his queen Henrietta Maria were entertained by the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, the lavish banquet ended with a large pie out of which popped Jeffrey Hudson in a miniature suit of armor. This gave rise to a rumor that he had been baked in the pie, but this was not the case. The Queen was so delighted that the Buckinghams presented their rarity to her. The Queen kept a separate household at Denmark House in London, and Jeffrey joined it at the end of 1626, along with two disproportionate dwarfs and a Welsh giant. Jeffrey became favored for his wit and elegance, and Inigo Jones wrote costumed masques in which he took part. The French queen’s court was Catholic and housed so many priests that some objections were raised among Londoners who feared a conspiracy might be afoot. Jeffrey embraced Catholicism and kept his faith throughout his difficult life, regularly assisting at Low Masses which occasioned tasteless puns. (Read more.)

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The Transgender Industrial Complex Is Collapsing

 From AMAC:

In Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, one character asks another how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he responds. “Gradually and then suddenly.” That quote has become a famous metaphor for slow, compounding developments that culminate in a sudden collapse – and now it applies to the transgender industrial complex that has for years insidiously preyed on vulnerable and confused children.

A pair of recent developments, which at first may appear distinct but are actually intimately related, reveal how transgender ideology has lost its grip over both the legal and medical establishments – pillars of the left’s institutional control over American society.

First, last week, a jury in White Plains, New York, awarded a 22-year-old woman named Fox Varian $2 million in a lawsuit against two medical providers. If you only get your information from legacy outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, or NBC, you’ve completely missed this story. But it nonetheless represents a dam-breaking moment that promises to unleash a torrent of lawsuits against activist-minded medical professionals who pushed transgender “treatments” on minors based on left-wing ideology rather than science.

Journalist Benjamin Ryan was the only reporter who attended the entire three-week trial, and he published his account in The Free Press. As he details, when Varian was just 16 years old, she received a double mastectomy under the label of “gender-affirming care.”

During the trial, Varian’s mother, Claire Deacon, testified that she initially did not want her daughter to undergo the surgery. But Varian’s psychologist, Kenneth Einhorn, said that removing her breasts was the only way to “heal” her gender confusion.

Like so many other parents of confused kids, Deacon was made to believe that her daughter was in mortal danger unless she signed off on the surgery. Einhorn and his co-defendant, plastic surgeon Simon Chin, argued that Varian wanted the procedure and that she was at risk of suicide if she did not have the mastectomy. It was “the hardest, most difficult, gut-wrenching” decision, Deacon told the jury.

As whistleblowers from inside the gender transition industry have reported, this sort of emotional blackmail is the go-to strategy for doctors and mental health professionals pushing transgender drugs and surgeries for minors. (Read more.)

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Getting Kicked Off X

 Oh for that warning voice! From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

 I’ve been kicked off of X.  Last weekend, I got a notice that I was suspended. This was followed by a notice saying I was unsuspended, which was then followed by another notice saying I was suspended, fully this time, and that the matter is closed.  Who did it? The list of suspects could be longer than an Agatha Christie novel. Despite being owned by Elon Musk, X is still vulnerable to censorship. 

        In my view, there are three possibilities.

    Fans of the Washington Post. The Washington Post was decimated last week, with owner Jeff Bezos cutting half of the staff. The destruction was the glorious realization of a lifelong dream of mine, and I was euphoric as I celebrated the demise of this evil institution. Washington Post reporters, like most journalists, are censors. It’s possible they dogpiled me and flooded Elon with complaints. Sally Quinn herself may have dropped the payload.

    Secondly, Hollywood. Or rather, the people in Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment industry who are not thrilled about my Anti-Communist Film Festival. A piece just ran on Breitbart exploring how the AFI theater in DC strung me along for months, only to reject my request to rent the theater to show The Lives of Others on its 20th anniversary. The Lives of Others is about the East German Stasi, the secret police who played for keeps. It’s possible my X account was sunk by the theater kids in America’s elite institutions. They are the American Stasi.

    Third, Jim VendeHei. When the Washington Post got nuked, VandeHei, a media figure who gave the world both Politico and Axios, was howling bloody murder and offering advice to save the paper. I shared an item I wrote about Jim - in fact, I shared it quite a lot. To everyone. It has some salty language in it. That could have done me in, although a warning would have been nice. (Read more.)

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History of the Louvre

Louvre, 17th Century

 It was at the Louvre in 1623 during Carnival that Prince Charles first saw Louis XIII's youngest sister Henrietta Maria, dancing in a masque. From Art and Object:

Though it’s now known for its renowned art collection, the Louvre began its life as a fortress in the 12th century designed to protect what was then the western edge of Paris. Built by Philip II, the medieval fortress featured a 98-foot tall keep and a moat. It was used to defend the city until Paris grew and other defensive structures were built on the new outskirts of the city in the 14th century. 

In the 16th century, however, Francis I demolished the original fortress and rebuilt the Louvre as a Renaissance-style royal residence. It continued to house the royal family until 1682 when Louis XIV built the Palace of Versailles.

Part of the medieval structure can still be seen today in the Louvre’s Salle Basse, built in the 13th century.

 In addition to building the renaissance palace, Francis I was an avid art collector. The art he amassed in the 16th century still makes up a core piece of the museum’s collection today, including works by Michelangelo and Raphael, as well as the museum’s most famous painting, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. (Read more.)

Henri IV lying in state at Louvre

Henri IV built the Grand Galerie at the Louvre. From Open Editions:

Louis XIII continued the tradition established by his father. In August1612, when the Duke of Pastrana was given an audience in the Petite Galerie, he entered the king’s apartment from the salle des gardes and walked through the antechamber and bedchamber, which were decorated by members of the court disposed by rank in a crescendo that terminated in the gallery. The gallery itself had been set up as a throne room, with Louis XIII and Maria de’ Medici seated side-by-side on an elevated platform at the far end of the room, looking out on the river Seine. Behind them, the ladies of the court stood on stands shaped as “those of a theatre,” while the pages of the king’s and queen’s bedchambers stood behind barriers placed along the sides of the room.19 Along with the members of the royal family, large numbers of courtiers attended such ceremonies, as reported by Camillo Guidi in September 1618:

Monsieur de Bonneuil […] led me to His Majesty, whom I met midway down the gallery as he was coming towards me […] The audience was long and favorable […] and one might say that the whole court and nobility was there.20

(Read more.)

Some impressions of Louis XIII. From The Secret Lives of Royals, Aristocrats and Commoners:

Louis XIII was short, ungainly, and---until disease attacked him---inclined to corpulence. He was not beautiful, although Sully, who had served the royal house so faithfully, professed to admire the boy's regular features. His nose was too large, his head out of proportion to his body, his chin projected, his lover lip was unpleasantly thickened, and his mouth was usually half-open. Owing to the awkward formation of his palate he was compelled to speak little and slowly to avoid a trying stammer. He suffered from chronic gout, and it is almost certain that he had at least one epileptic fit. His teeth were decayed, and he was a continual invalid through persistent dyspepsia. Most of these physical defects may be traced in his family history. Many of them he bequeathed to his sons. Philip inherited his undersized stature as well as his brown hair and swarthy skin. In profile Louis XIV challenged comparison with the ancestral Bourbons, and was in more ways than one a true grandson of Henri IV. (Read more.)

 And his brother Gaston, HERE.

Purchase My Queen, My Love, HERE.
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Dear Olympic Athletes...Stop The Shameful Trash Talk

 From Jan Greenhawk at The Easton Gazette:

Please remember, you have been chosen to represent the United States in a SPORT, not in political commentary, while you are at the Olympics. You have been given all kinds of swag, publicity, money, support, travel, housing, food etc. all bankrolled by the people of the United States either through donations, support of sport governing bodies, and yes, taxes that supported the arenas and areas you practiced in. And, indirectly, yes, taxes supported your opportunities.

I was once heavily involved in the sport of gymnastics as a coach, a judge and a national volunteer chairman. I saw how hard so many people worked to get teams to Olympic venues; people who had their Olympic dreams shattered and would never see the glory of competition in the Olympic arena.

But you do.

When you are done at the Olympics, whether you win or not, you will carry that honor with you for the rest of your life. It will always be attached to your name, and it will likely open doors for you that will be closed to others.

When you are finished competing on our dime and representing us, you can say what you want and be as political as you want. At that point, it becomes about YOU not us.

But, while you are wearing OUR flag, OUR colors, OUR uniform on the international stage, you need to remember the HONOR you have been given. You were NOT entitled to it but we allowed you to have it. So, when you speak about our country, how about if you HONOR us instead of disparaging us? Keep your personal opinions about anything other than your sport to yourself. (Read more.)

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The Myth of Stolen Land and the Erasure of Indigenous Agency

 From Alexander Muse at Amuse on X:

By the time Spanish missionaries and soldiers established a sustained presence in California in the late 18th century, indigenous California had already been transformed by forces internal to the continent. Disease, resource pressure, and intertribal conflict had reduced populations and altered political structures. Spain claimed California as a colonial possession, governed it for just over half a century, and integrated it into a broader imperial system. When Mexico gained independence, it inherited Spanish sovereignty. California then passed from Mexico to the US in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a treaty negotiated between two recognized states following a declared war, and ratified under the international law of the era.

One can condemn the war. Many did, even at the time. But condemnation does not erase the legal fact of transfer. Mexico ceded California in exchange for $15M and the assumption of $3.25M in debt. That is not theft in any coherent legal sense. It is state succession, a mechanism by which sovereignty has changed hands throughout recorded history.

At this point, critics often shift the argument. The land may have passed legally between colonial powers, they say, but it was never theirs to give. It belonged to the tribes. This objection deserves careful treatment, because it raises the hardest questions.

The US government itself recognized these questions. In the early 1850s, federal negotiators entered into treaties with California tribes, treaties that involved the cession of land in exchange for reservations, goods, livestock, and federal recognition. These agreements were not symbolic gestures. They were attempts, however flawed, to regularize sovereignty through consent rather than extermination. Some treaties were shamefully mishandled, delayed, or ignored by Congress. That failure remains a stain. But the existence of the treaties matters. It shows that tribal leaders were not treated merely as obstacles to be cleared, but as parties capable of bargaining, choosing, and surviving.

To insist that these agreements were meaningless because tribes were too weak to consent is to deny indigenous agency altogether. It implies that native leaders were incapable of understanding tradeoffs, incapable of acting strategically, and incapable of making binding decisions for their people. That view is not morally enlightened. It is condescending.

The moral record of the US in California is mixed, and often dark. Violence, displacement, and broken promises occurred. None of that is in dispute. But moral wrongdoing does not automatically negate sovereignty. If it did, nearly every nation on earth would be illegitimate. Borders everywhere are the product of conquest, negotiation, succession, and compromise. To single out California as uniquely stolen is to apply a standard that no historical society could meet. (Read more.)

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