Tea at Trianon: Saving Manhood

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

Monday, February 4, 2013

Saving Manhood

A must-read from Fr. Angelo:

Moral erosion is also why agnostic natural law arguments alone will not divert the trajectory of the cultural decline. Erosion is an ongoing process which by nature accelerates the longer it is allowed to go on. It cannot be stopped by degree. Either the weathering process completely ceases and the embankment is shored up, or the erosion continues. There is no middle ground. Natural law arguments are important and necessary. The political side of things require that we distinguish between the shared interests within a pluralistic society and the interests of those of particular confessions, but a godless society, is just that: godless. As long as it remains so, by necessity moral erosion must continue.

We are not on a slippery slope. We are in free fall. The ground is not sliding away. It is just plain gone. It becomes increasingly more difficult to use reason in discourse about public morality because the emotional argument has been used to trump everything. It has trumped a reasonable definition of marriage and gender. It has trumped any discussion of objective morality. It has trumped legal history and tradition. And of course, all this sensitivity training has practically criminalized manhood. Ironically, in the age of rebellion, firm conviction and decisive action in the face of vehement opposition is a hate crime.

The irony is even more excruciating if we consider that “last bastion” of burgeoning manhood which is the Boy Scouts. It is a universally recognized institution that cuts across cultural and religious divisions. It is American as apple pie, and can be as Catholic as a priest with an Irish surname. It is also iconic of the give and take that is exchanged in all healthy cultures between fathers and sons. Not every Scout Master is the father of a Boy Scout, and not every Scout has a father that is his Master, but the institution has been set up according to that dynamic because it is so fundamental. And because it is fundamental it works like gangbusters in many diverse situations and conditions. ”Let’s turn boys into men by the good example of their fathers,” we say. But they say, “No, let’s make sure that everyone feels good about themselves.” The emasculation of the Boy Scouts. How obscene. (Read entire article.)