Tea at Trianon: The Civilization of the Lie

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

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

The Civilization of the Lie

From Return to Order:

The Ancien Régime , the period of French history before the French Revolution, was one of them. While not perfect, many historians today admit to its cultural and social refinement and general well-being. If popular opinion is any guide, the three million tourists who flock to the Palace of Versailles every year – not to mention the many books, plays, and films that romanticize the period – reveal a widespread sympathy for a time that had, in the words of Talleyrand, much douceur de vivre or “sweetness of life.”

On the other hand, the name “Roaring Twenties” describes well the degenerate spirit of post-World War I Western society. Les années folles, or “the crazy years” as the French call them, saw unprecedented materialism, cultural change, and sexual immorality. Nineteen-twenty’s philosophy, art, music, literature and the newly invented medium of the motion picture were saturated with an enthusiasm for all things “modern” and a rejection of tradition.

Every era, of course, is judged by future generations. What name will our great-great-great-grandchildren give to ours? Long after the NFL, Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley have disappeared in the sands of time, these characteristics will remain, as it were, like the ruins of Pompeii, without there to make excuses. What will our bones reveal about us?

They won’t have many good things to say. Twenty-first century Western society has mostly apostatized from the Catholic Faith that built it. Pagan religions such as Wicca, Buddhism and even Satanism have become mainstream, filling the void. Apostasy from the Faith goes hand in hand with rejection of Christian morals. Beginning with divorce and contraception, the sexual revolution steadily advanced until abortion, pornography, homosexuality, and now transgenderism – unthinkable a few decades ago – were imposed on conventional society.

Socialism, once considered beyond the pale in American politics, is making inroads. On the one-hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution research by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation showed that more millennials would prefer to live in a socialist country (44%) than a capitalist one (42%), and 7% even preferred a communist one.1 If not explicitly socialist, large numbers of millennials favor socialist policies such as gun control, the government takeover of health care, homosexual “marriage,” and confiscatory wealth redistribution. (Read more.)