Tea at Trianon: No Gratitude

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

Thursday, March 28, 2019

No Gratitude

From Intellectual Takeout:

After arm-wrestling and talking for a long time about the former Navy SEAL’s own journey in politics, Crenshaw was questioned on why so many of today's young people are going all-in on the “democratic socialism” touted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders.

According to Crenshaw, there are three main culprits:

1. No gratitude for the founding principles.

"It's a lack of gratitude," Crenshaw began. "There's a complete lack of gratitude for these principles that gave us all of these things ... personal responsibility, this idea that liberty is good, [the] idea of fairness where you get where you deserve and that not everybody gets equal stuff. ... [Those principles] lead to the ability to thrive in a free market ... and yet there's no gratitude for them."

Too often in modern American society, the founding principles that built our nation (the Jordan Peterson-esque principles of personal responsibility, justice, and complementarianism), have been tossed by the wayside, replaced instead by PC culture and unkept promises.

Crenshaw believes that these basic principles – the same principles that have supported the American dream for hundreds of years – are quickly being forgotten and then replaced. (Read more.)

From The Blaze:

If you compare the American Revolution to the French Revolution, it's worth noting that Europeans, unlike the early Americans, believed that liberty was the enemy of religion. In fact, they were astonished when they observed that one of the most enlightened societies of the 19th century was openly religious, as observed by author W. Cleon Skousen in the "Five Thousand Year Leap."

During French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville's stay in America in 1831, he noticed that freedom and religion — even amongst the differing sects — were "intimately united," which was unheard of at the time. De Tocqueville found this marriage between the new republic and religion indispensable and so should we. As de Tocqueville put it:

"Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law as well as the surest pledge of freedom."

Former U.S. President John Adams said it best when he said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Sadly, Americans have lost faith in important institutions, churches being chief among them. (Read more.)