Tea at Trianon: Can Yale Be Saved?

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

Monday, March 1, 2021

Can Yale Be Saved?

From The Stream:

On Wednesday night I took part in a fruitful but profoundly alarming discussion. In an online livestream, I joined three other Yalies: best-selling Christian author Eric Metaxas; dogged and much-abused Christian scholar Robert Oscar Lopez; and Yale ’19 survivor conservative Declan Kunkel. The topic: Can Yale and schools like it be saved? Also: Can attending them lose you your soul?

The occasion? A petition circulating among Harvard students to revoke the diplomas of known Trump supporters. That’s right. These thin-skinned little Stalinists think they can get away with that. In a world where lawyers are trying to get Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley disbarred, it’s best to laugh nothing off as impossible.

Before 2020, if I told you what would happen at Twitter, then happen to Parler, would you have believed me? So don’t console yourself by scoffing. We’re in the midst of a great Awokening. Of mass conversions to a new and false religion. This creed steals what morals it has from the Christian Civil Rights Movement. But it splices them into its own nihilist, Darwinist DNA.
The Frankenstein monster resulting is neither slow, sluggish nor stupid. In fact, it’s busily conquering every bastion in the West, from the sniffy heights of Harvard to the crowded shelves at Kohl’s, even pausing to castrate Mr. Potato Head. (Though it looks like the spud may have been given a temporary reprieve.)

This religion of the antichrist has swamped the Vatican, the EU, the UN, and the US Catholic bishops. Even now it is trying to conquer evangelical colleges and seminaries — in the sheep’s clothing of “critical race theory,” i.e., Marxism in blackface and stubbly, bad drag. (Read more.)