Tea at Trianon: The Family and the State

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

Friday, May 13, 2016

The Family and the State

From Return to Order:

The family is the single most important component of a Christian society. However, while the family is a tremendously vital force for development of the individual, it alone will not suffice. A regime of separate and scattered families, even very Christian families, does not a society make. Isolated families alone cannot normally sustain themselves in face of the uncertainties of life, they need the resources of a community and a State.

For this reason, sociologists say that the family is an imperfect society. Not in the sense that it is inadequate or defective, rather, the family is imperfect because it depends upon other social units to exist and function. Thus, the family requires higher bodies like the State to guarantee peace and order, justice and protected rights, or security and defense. The family also depends upon the support other imperfect organizations such as municipalities, companies, or professional organizations for resources that it needs to prosper. (Read more.)