Tea at Trianon: The Still-Acceptable Prejudice

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

Friday, October 27, 2017

The Still-Acceptable Prejudice

From Charlotte Allen at First Things:

The Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Barrett’s nomination last month was a textbook case of the precise kind of anti-Catholicism that is permissible and even encouraged among Democrats. The committee’s ranking minority member, Dianne Feinstein, who isn’t even the most liberal of the Senate liberals (she’s being challenged on her party’s left in her upcoming reelection race), became notorious for her on-the-floor accusation that Barrett had absorbed too much Catholic “dogma” to be able to apply the law in the cases in front of her:

Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that—you know, dogma and law are two different things. . . . And I think in your case, Professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.
At issue—at least theoretically—was a 1998 article in the Marquette Law Review, “Catholic Judges in Capital Cases,” which Barrett, fresh out of law school and clerking for Silberman, had co-authored with one of her Notre Dame professors, John H. Garvey, who is now the president of the Catholic University of America. Garvey and Barrett asserted that Catholic judges should not be automatically “disqualified” from ruling in death-penalty cases just because Catholic teaching generally opposes the death penalty. Nonetheless, the two argued, Catholic judges have an obligation to “conform their own behavior to the Church’s standard” and voluntarily recuse themselves from cases that involve “enforcing the death penalty,” as by directly sentencing someone to death. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: And yet the Liberal left rage that our efforts at protecting this country from terrorism is anti-Muslim and targeting people because of their religion....their hypocrisy is so blatant!; October 28, 2017 at 9:18:00 AM EDT