Tea at Trianon: Michael Novak on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

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, November 7, 2016

Michael Novak on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

From Breitbart:

In an interview with the Italian online journal Tempi on the so-called “Catholic vote” in the 2016 elections, Novak admits that Trump is not the candidate of his dreams, but given the options, he stands head and shoulders above his opponent.

“It is clear that Trump is not exactly the candidate by whom a Catholic would want to be represented. But in politics you elect a president, not a saint, or a bishop or the Pope,” said Novak, the author of the international bestseller The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism and a point of reference for many Catholic thinkers.

Along with other Catholic intellectuals, Novak considers Hillary to be simply unvotable. “She’s a woman who has lied, violated national laws and anyone else would end up in prison for these things,” he said. “As for me, I cannot vote for a candidate so favorable to abortion, to the secularist agenda in the moral sphere and such a ferocious adversary of religious freedom.”

Asked about Trump’s spat with the Pope over building a border wall with Mexico, Novak said it is a problem that affects Italians but not one that has resonated particularly with American Catholics.

“Here, no one pays the slightest attention,” he said, “while illegal immigration is a real problem, strongly felt by the Americans who want to uphold the law.”

Novak acknowledged that it isn’t easy for Europeans to see the elections the way Americans do. “The truth is that if Clinton wins we risk losing our freedom, because Democrats are increasingly illiberal with those who don’t think the way they do,” he said.

Regarding the popularity of the Republican candidate with middle America, Novak said that Trump is “very good at talking to the gut feelings of the country” and always repeats the same message to Americans: “they have betrayed you, it is time to change.”

“If he is successful it is because he simply speaks a great truth. All Americans know very well that they have been betrayed. But this betrayal did not happen in a day, it started 60 years ago,” he said.

Gradually, “we started to divide values from life, values from law, through many small compromises. And Catholics have a great responsibility in this. Education has failed, because the universities have all fallen into the hands of the left and we have pulled down a whole generation, the so-called millennials, into a vacuum of values and meaning,” he said. (Read more.)