Tea at Trianon: A Brave Young Journalist

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 25, 2015

A Brave Young Journalist

From The National Catholic Register:

IRVINE, Calif. — With the façade of a fictitious biotechnology company, David Daleiden and his fellow investigators from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) infiltrated the bowels of the abortion industry at its ugliest.

For 30 months, as part of their “Human Capital” investigation, they followed the trail that led to aborted babies whose parts are earmarked for sale, even while their little hearts are still beating.
“It is a paradox that we can’t have laws that recognize unborn babies as human, and yet, it is their very humanness that makes them valuable for experimentation,” Daleiden said in an interview last week with the Register.

“It is as if they [the biotech companies] are going on a treasure hunt for the heads or hearts of babies, but how much more valuable would those heads and hearts be if they were allowed to grow up and be a part of society?”

As leader of the project, Daleiden schmoozed and lunched with people at the top of Planned Parenthood — abortionists, administrators and directors. Acting as if he wanted to procure the valuable parts of aborted babies, Daleiden secretly videotaped the perpetrators so they would be admitting their own guilt in front of what certainly would be a shocked public.

It was mission accomplished on July 14, when Daleiden released the first of a dozen videos. In just a few days, more than 2 million people had viewed the video, and five investigations were opened: three congressional and two state. And this week, his organization released a second video that has further intensified the public questioning of Planned Parenthood’s fetal-tissue policies and calls for defunding and more investigations.

But Planned Parenthoods’ callous disregard for the bodies of innocent babies should have surprised no one, according to Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia.

“No one should be shocked by this video,” Archbishop Chaput said in a statement for the Register. “This is who Planned Parenthood is and what it does. It’s been part of the organization’s gene code from the start. The logic of its disdain for new life is just working itself out. And it won’t stop until the money and the media adulation are cut off.” (Read more.)