Tea at Trianon: Gilroy, El Paso, Dayton

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, August 7, 2019

Gilroy, El Paso, Dayton — and Columbine

As I have said before, when babies in the womb are not protected by the law then respect for human life disappears. Combine that with broken families, fatherless households, drugs and every kind of abuse; society goes into a free-fall. People go crazy. Fine, take away all the guns and the violent ones will turn to knives and bombs. People who have no reverence for God have no hope of heaven, no fear of hell. Any and every evil becomes possible. From Archbishop Chaput:

Certain kinds of killing we enshrine as rights and protect by law. When we live this kind of contradiction, why are we surprised at the results?...Only a fool can believe that “gun control” will solve the problem of mass violence. The people using the guns in these loathsome incidents are moral agents with twisted hearts. And the twisting is done by the culture of sexual anarchy, personal excess, political hatreds, intellectual dishonesty, and perverted freedoms that we’ve systematically created over the past half-century. (Read more.)

From A Conservative Blog for Peace:

In the aftermath of this latest flurry of mass shootings, we'll hear lots of pontificating about guns and racism. But we'll hear little to nothing about the real problem, which is the increasing alienation of young men in our society. This has been evident since Columbine. A perfect storm of broken families, social and economic powerlessness, lack of masculine influence, social media, and the decline of religious faith has disposed today's young men to extreme ideological fantasies. None of this can be fixed overnight, but until we recognize and confront these issues directly, expect things to get much worse. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: The sense of powerlessness in these young men has led them to seize the ultimate power which is that of life and death. It seems the model of true manhood has been unavailable to them as young men therefore they have created their own sense of what they deem to be power.; August 8, 2019 at 9:01:00 PM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: So very true.; August 8, 2019 at 9:06:00 PM EDT