Tea at Trianon: When Atheists Judge You

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, April 24, 2012

When Atheists Judge You

Some insights from author Amanda Borenstadt.

When I was pregnant with my first child I was young, unmarried, and because I was so liberal, rather proud of myself. I had a feeling she would be a boy. Yes, she. I was totally wrong. But at the time, I was convinced she was a boy. I was in college at the time--literature major--and many of the professors were man-hating Christian-hating, loaded with "white guilt," liberals. My history professor was one of the worst. "White, Christian males are bad. They're responsible for all of the ills of the world." When you're hormonal, thinking you're carrying a white male in your belly, this is hard to take. My unborn baby had already been judged unfit. Maybe it was all of the tears I'd shed after that class, but the liberal scales started to fall from my eyes. These people who always said Christians were judgmental, well, weren't they being judgmental themselves? (Read entire post.)

julygirl said...: I have discovered that as well....I always thought of myself as tolerant and accepting of many approaches and views that were not the same as mine, and was interested in hearing them, but I have noticed that Liberals in the political sense, are rather intolerant of any other views and not at all 'liberal'....but I might add, that seems to be the way of human nature, to believe that one has truth.; April 24, 2012 at 6:18:00 PM EDT