Tea at Trianon: Guns, Youth, Civics, and the Dying Art of Conversation

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, May 4, 2018

Guns, Youth, Civics, and the Dying Art of Conversation

From PopZette:

I then asked the students about the leading cause of death among young people. First was accidents, at 41 percent. Over 2,820 young people died in car accidents alone. Over 10 percent of those were related to distracted driving — to texting and phone-related activity."Why not march about that?" I told them. "Many more of you die that way, and it's behavior you can actually control and change."

Next was suicide, at 18 percent. Homicide was third, at 16 percent; 87 percent of those deaths were gun-related. The overwhelming majority were not from assault-style weapons but handguns, the students learned. Less than 1 percent of those shootings happened in schools. "Say we eliminate the high-powered assault rifles you talked about before," I said. "How much change would you see?"

"If we can save even one life, it's worth it," one student said. A few others nodded.

"And if those laws are passed, and there are a lot of people who think they should be, what will stop future killers from using handguns to do what they set out to do?" I asked. There was no answer. So I kept asking questions. (Read more.)