Tea at Trianon: Brexit, Trump, and Identity

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

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Brexit, Trump, and Identity

The Catholic World Report:

The case of American identity may shed light on the matter. That identity is far from a human universal, but it evidently has some reality. Growing up in America marked me (to continue with myself as an example) in a way that won't go away, and brought with it unavoidable obligations toward the assemblage of people and institutions that helped make me what I am. So I'm distinctly and indelibly American.

On the other hand, America is a manmade unity rather than a natural fact or a divinely ordained reality, it won't last forever, and it's changed a great deal, along with the principles and spirit that animate it. Further, those who guide it want to move more and more toward open borders and ultimately a borderless world, a change that would eventually make American identity less distinct even than my identity as a Brooklynite.

That's a problem, because while American identity is humanly dispensable, membership in a particular people is not. A people is a population joined by common history, loyalties, institutions, and way of life, and by a sense of common destiny. The existence of particular peoples is a human universal, and they serve a necessary function by providing members with a somewhat coherent framework for life with others that includes mutual loyalties and the common habits, attitudes, and understandings that go by the name of culture.

The culture of a particular people functions in large part by recognizing other aspects of identity and giving them a common interpretation that helps them work together so that people can have a decent way of life. Thus, particular peoples and their cultures normally recognize common humanity, masculinity, femininity, family relations, and religion, and attribute an importance to those things related to their natural and intrinsic function. Until recently, American culture did so as well. Like other cultures, it had flaws, but it had strengths as well, and gave Catholics a place to live and something to work with. (Read more.)