Tea at Trianon: Protecting Our Daughters

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, February 9, 2013

Protecting Our Daughters

How the culture of porn dehumanizes our girls and turns them into playthings.

Scary and hugely pressurising, would be Steve Biddulph’s answer. In his timely new book, Raising Girls, Biddulph says that about five years ago (around the time that sexting and camera-phones were taking off) psychologists began to notice a marked and sudden plunge in girls’ mental health. The average teenage female was “stressed and depressed in a way never seen before”. Girls were growing up too fast, much faster than their mothers had. Our 18 is their 14, our 14 is their 10.

Mainstream media has made porn-inspired sex seem compulsory for girls at ever younger ages. “So what?” says the liberal parent who doesn’t think it’s cool to challenge their child’s lifestyle choices, and may secretly envy them. Biddulph has harsh words for these hands-off mummies and daddies: “Having your daughter as a friend – so much easier than actually raising her,” he mocks. (Read entire article.)