Tea at Trianon: So Much for Liberty

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

Saturday, April 8, 2017

So Much for Liberty

From The Federalist:

When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher attended the Paris Summit in 1989 that celebrated the Bicentenaire of the French Revolution, reporters flocked around the “Iron Lady” to get her opinion of that tumultuous event.

“I think it resulted in a lot of headless bodies and a tyrant,” Mrs. Thatcher coolly responded. Shocked, reporters asked if she could not concede, at minimum, that the French Revolution initiated the West’s proclamation of human rights. “Certainly not,” she retorted, “human rights were proclaimed in Magna Carta!”

Indeed. And Magna Carta began with recognizing the rights of the Christian church. All of that seems adjourned now in light of the French Socialist government’s new attack on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and liberty of conscience. French President Francois Hollande is so unpopular he dared not seek a second term. But that that did not deter his discredited government from attacking pro-life websites that offer women an alternative to abortion.

The French government seems blasé about its own actions, and one report on the vote blandly claimed that the opinions France is outlawing are merely those of “right wing politicians and Catholics.” As if right-wing citizens and Catholics can have their civil rights cut off without recourse in a nation that calls itself a democracy. (Read more.)