Tea at Trianon: Liberalism: An Established Religion

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

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Liberalism: An Established Religion

From Crisis:

Liberalism thus proposes a new object of esteem—the individual will. This new object can logically suffice in cases of religious conflict only by raising it to that level. People must accept, either through their own embrace of liberalism or through the force of law, that individual will supersedes whatever else they would worship. Hence in our example neither group fully gets what it wants. The churchgoers cannot prohibit sports, and sports enthusiasts must bear with church. But each individual gets what he or she wants consistent with the will of others. Individual will now controls, and one’s respect or admiration for or devotion to it must be extravagant for it to do its job.

Liberals therefore worship individual will. Their complimentary belief is in voluntarism, a moral theory that elevates will over reason. Voluntarism has little regard for the objective order of truth perceivable by reason. Traditional believers who expect to conform to the objective order, for example by not insuring abortion or by not honoring same-sex intimacies, are ironically stigmatized by liberals as bearers of irrational animus.

Those stigmatized are often bewildered by the progressive nature of liberal demands. There is apparently no limit to the respect, admiration, and devotion advanced liberals have for the individual will. A recent example is the will to use bathrooms designated for the opposite sex. Liberals applaud this new willfulness and distain any objections based on reason. (Read more.)