Tea at Trianon: Too Many Rights?

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

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Too Many Rights?

An excellent article. To quote:

Modern rights are creations of the Enlightenment. Created by philosophes, rights were perpetuated (often violently) by revolutionaries, Jacobins , and other radicals. Some based them in nature; others, in the god Reason, or yet others, in the state. But they all adhere to a Procrustean universalism. These rights are “natural, imprescriptible, and inalienable” said the revolutionary French National Assembly in 1789.

These ‘rights’, always in opposition to long-standing tradition or community custom, require large governmental, if not international, force to institute their authority. For these new rights to exist, they had to supplant the older authority, often with the help of a centralized government to do so. Natural rights eventually replaced ancestral traditions, statute supplanted customary law, and entitlement usurped obligation.

Also from Taki's blog, an account of the confrontation between Fr. Rutler and Mr. Hitchens. Fr. Rutler has once again shown himself to be a true gentleman, as is becoming to the anointed of the Lord. (WARNING: Hitchens is extremely vulgar.) Share

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: There was an article about Mr. Hitchens at a recent debate at Georgetown University in the "Washington Post" this weekend.; October 16, 2007 at 10:58:00 AM EDT