Tea at Trianon: Achieving Christendom

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, February 1, 2020

Achieving Christendom

From TFP:

Because our problems are moral, our solutions must also be moral. The rich treasury of Western thought and traditional Church teaching prove that the natural law and Christian morality are the norms that are best suited to our human and social nature. We find our greatest happiness inside institutions and social structures that take us to the end for which we are created—God. Thus, we should naturally tend to favor Christendom. Everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, finds the best conditions for prospering inside a family of nations that facilitates virtue and promotes social harmony in this vale of tears.

But everyone avoids this conclusion. We have long been conditioned to reject this line of thought. This Anything But Christendom (ABC) Syndrome curiously applies alike to the political left, right and center. It embraces both secular and religious America. The most rigid tyranny bars anyone from thinking outside the materialistic box. (Read more.)