Tea at Trianon: Color Me Green

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

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Color Me Green

Anthony Esolen discusses the ironies of the new religion, la verditude. To quote:

Here in Canada la verditude is fast becoming a new and very silly religion. It always strikes us with something like a political shock when we arrive for the summer and suddenly remember that the garbage police will be looking out for what we throw away, and what we throw it away in. Trash goes in clear bags, period. Cardboard and plastic go in one see-through blue bag; cans and glass go in another. Vegetable parings, eggshells, coffee grounds, crusts of bread, and all things edible except for meat and cheese, don't go anywhere. Or rather they go into your compulsory compost heap in the backyard.
Now I don't mind all this, though I do think that the clear bag is a bit unnerving, when you think of the papers and personal materials you might be throwing away. If you leave aside the whole global warming apocalyptic -- "Woe to the inhabitants of earth!" -- I'll put up with the Canadian habit of cleaning up after themselves. But what's going on here is exactly what C. S. Lewis describes in The Screwtape Letters as a neat diabolical trick. The devils, says Screwtape, distract their foolish charges, persuading them to worry about sins they don't commit, and thereby to overlook the sins they do. So you'll hardly ever see a Canadian tossing trash out of his car window; and you won't see garbage blowing about the front yard; and you will see plenty of bicyclists in the cities. But in another sense the Canadians are perfectly slovenly and selfish polluters, just as bad as are their American cousins.