Tea at Trianon: What Nonreligious People Get Wrong About Religious People

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, September 1, 2018

What Nonreligious People Get Wrong About Religious People

From Ben Shapiro at The Daily Wire:

With the media furiously obsessed over the supposed imminent end of the Trump presidency (spoiler alert: nope), the new conversation among the elite concerns the supposed evils of Vice President Mike Pence. Pence, our leftist thought leaders proclaim, is perhaps even more frightening than President Trump. Frank Bruni of The New York Times terms Pence a "holy terror waiting in the wings ... a bigot ... a liar ... cruel."

This is nothing new. Conan O'Brien says that "many members of Congress are preparing for a Mike Pence presidency. Yeah, they're preparing by binge-watching 'The Handmaid's Tale.'" Joy Behar called Pence's faith a "mental illness." John Oliver trolled Pence last year by mocking his daughter's children's book about a bunny rabbit -- in Oliver's parody book, the bunny rabbit is gay. Because, of course, Pence would hate a gay bunny.

Last year, the media went into a tizzy when they learned that Pence refuses to dine alone with women other than his wife (the same media have since been shocked to learn that Harvey Weinstein loved dining alone with women other than his wife). This policy made Pence a bigot. But that was just the beginning. Pence, said the media, supported "gay conversion therapy." This, of course, is false as well. But that didn't stop the media from feting gay 2018 Winter Olympian Adam Rippon, who proceeded to trot out that debunked chestnut.

What is so frightening about Pence? His status as a religious Christian. According to many on the left, Pence's religiosity means he's a theocrat. Never mind the fact that Pence is a limited-government conservative who isn't generally interested in imposing policy preferences from above; he believes in Jesus, and therefore, he must want to install himself at the head of the United Christian States of America. (Read more.)