Tea at Trianon: Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should

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

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should

From TFP:

The Colin Kaepernick controversy is symptomatic of our days. A major league football quarterback sits down during the national anthem as a protest. The liberals crown him a hero exercising his freedom to protest against alleged injustice. The conservatives deplore his action (rightly so) because it dishonors the flag and the nation. Another case in point is that of the Satanic Mass in Oklahoma City held last month offending God and countless Catholics. Liberals hailed this event as an exercise in freedom of expression. Those opposing saw it was a horrific blasphemy of the worst sort....

In a society where everything is allowed—where if you can do it, you should—there is only one action that is not permitted: To affirm that something is categorically wrong and should not be done. There is only one thing that one is not free to express and that is the assertion that such controversial actions are immoral. Anyone who states there is an objective moral law based on human nature and valid for all times and places is censored, ridiculed, and scorned. As the Sorbonne students in the 1968 riots said: “It is forbidden to forbid.”

Against those who claim “if you can do it, you should,” the only defense is to proclaim loudly and clearly that “just because you can do it does not mean you should.” The mere fact that it is legally permitted does not mean it is right. (Read more.)