Tea at Trianon: Lessons You Must Teach Your Children and Grandchildren

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

Monday, July 2, 2018

Lessons You Must Teach Your Children and Grandchildren

About money. From Money Talks News:

In the first quarter of 2018, household debt reached a record $13.21 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Household debt is now 18 percent higher than it was in the second quarter of 2013. Imagine how all that debt might impact the life of the average debtor. What will happen if there is a job loss or an illness that health insurance does not cover? How much stress would you feel in that situation? Debt, especially unsecured consumer debt, is a form of slavery. The debtor is beholden to the creditor because each day that the debt remains unpaid, interest charges pile up. Over time, it’s easy to see how the unchecked use of credit can erode wealth and foreclose opportunities. (Read more.)