Tea at Trianon: Open Your Eyes

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, October 14, 2017

Open Your Eyes

From Dr. Anhony Esolen:

Who stands up for the poor against those who ravage the family? Name for me one impoverished or oppressed people in the history of the world who rose to prosperity or who threw off the yoke of their oppressors while living in sexual license and remaining content with the ensuing family chaos. Name one. The Irish were brutalized by the English for three centuries, yet they did not lose the family, and they prevailed. Had my Italian grandfathers been indifferent to the morals of their children, I would not now be writing these words, because only a strong family headed by a good father can channel the energies of a young man with a rebellious streak who is stronger than his mother and smarter than his teachers. No, it is easier to blame a social specter, like an all-pervading racism or the fog of “privilege,” than to reckon with the uncomfortable facts of common observation, biology, and history, and the testimony of every human culture, from stone knives to the microchip. (Read more.)