Tea at Trianon: Pro-Lifers Help at the Border

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, August 3, 2019

Pro-Lifers Help at the Border

From Kathryn Jean Lopez at the National Review:

“We are pro-life because we care about the inherit human dignity of every living person, inside the womb and out,” Herndon-De La Rosa says. She feels a heightened responsibility to not look away from people at the border because “as a Texan . . . it’s happening in my backyard,” she notes. “All are vulnerable and all are human beings.”

New Wave Feminists previously made headlines when, owing to their anti-abortion views, they were denied a place at the Women’s March on Washington the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Herndon-De La Rosa’s efforts at the border are consistent with the tone she strikes on abortion: Let’s get to a place where we support initiatives we can agree on; in this case, it’s about making sure conditions are safe and humane for mothers and children and families as they seek asylum in the U.S.

Herndon-De La Rosa and her New Wave Feminists want our society to ultimately see abortion as unthinkable — which is only going to come with establishing more credibility and trust than people across the political aisles and labels on abortion currently have. Also consistent with this thinking, she tells me:

The people at the border are not “others.” They’re not our enemy. Many of them are . . . people of faith, mothers and fathers, good, decent people just trying to escape a horrific situation. They are just like us. . . . We have a two-party system that’s broken, and it’s not going to be fixed overnight. We have to be there to fill in the gaps where we can.
The New Wave Feminists’ Bottles to the Border 2.0 campaign began as the media debated Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s remark about the detention centers at the border being “concentration camps.” Having previously learned how quickly the respite center runs through donations, New Wave Feminists decided it was time to go back down to McAllen. (Read more.)