Tea at Trianon: Don't Tell the Truth

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, June 6, 2016

Don't Tell the Truth

From Chronicles:

Hunter’s strategy in debating this topic is typical of social conservatives, demonstrating their inability to understand how to make an effective argument (or, alternatively, when not to make one at all). As per usual, something is naively assumed about the subject of the minor premise. All war is hell; women should be protected from hell; therefore, women should not be sent to war.

I will note in passing that this is not actually an argument against forcing women to register with Selective Service, but one against permitting women to be in combat—and that unsinkable luxury liner has already sailed.

Hunter, himself a veteran, showed graphic images of combat maimings and killings to the committee: “The draft is there to get more people to rip the enemies’ throats out and kill them,” he said.

How did he assume that this would be interpreted? That women should not be permitted to be in the military, where they may be asked to rip out the throats of our enemies?

On what basis? (Read more.)