Tea at Trianon: Nixon's Catholic Coup

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

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Nixon's Catholic Coup

There is a new book about Richard Nixon. To quote:

Nixon ran a very centrist presidency, not a Goldwater conservative presidency. He did not tear apart the social programs or the social safety net that a lot of Catholics favored. At the same time, he stood for peace with honor in Vietnam, against the demonstrators and the rioters—and against the liberal media. And I think many Catholics of that generation—conservative, traditionalist Catholic union folks—were much closer to Richard Nixon than they were to the elites demonstrating on the campuses or the rioters. They were concerned about the crime rate and all of these things factored into it. The amazing thing is to look at the figures. Nixon won 22 percent of the Catholic vote against Jack Kennedy in 1960, he won 33 percent in 1968 and he would have won more that year if Wallace hadn’t been in the race. I don’t think it would have been much more, but I think if Wallace had been out of the race we would have won the race going away. But in 1972, he won 55 percent of the Catholic vote against George McGovern, who Tom Eagleton called the candidate of amnesty and abortion. So cultural, moral and social issues brought postwar Catholics into the Nixon new majority. (Read more.)

Via A Conservative Blog for Peace. Share