Tea at Trianon: Time for a Restoration

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, March 31, 2021

Time for a Restoration

From The Catholic Thing:

The destruction of churches and art is strikingly similar to another area where beauty is under attack: women. Women have been made to be beautiful and have been the subjects of great art for millennia for good reason. It was International Women’s Day yesterday, but sadly, since the 1960s and 70s, true feminine beauty has been transformed into raw sex appeal. New trends in third-wave feminism and its fourth wave, the LGBTQ+ movement, have maintained high-pitched sexuality, but also splintered off into a different direction – the rejection of the feminine entirely and the embrace of genderlessness.

It’s human nature that, as women, we’re susceptible to trends. It’s seen as a virtue to be breezily trendy or to look as if you stepped out of a fashion magazine. But trends aren’t limited to fabric colors and hairstyles. They extend deeply into patterns of thought and behavior.

One well-documented current trend – a sort of social contagion among high-school and college women – is to venture into the world of testosterone injections and gender-fluidity. Planned Parenthood has pivoted to accommodate the new demand for body-altering hormones. One employee expressed how deeply conflicted she feels seeing the degree of casualness with which young girls are now seeking such dire physical alterations. It’s not unusual for girls to head there in groups, much like they did to get their ears pierced thirty years ago, but this time motivated by deep pain and confusion about who and what they are.

Other trends beyond hormones and selective hacking off of body parts include looking butch, piercing as many body parts as possible, and covering oneself in tats. Here is a 2018 slideshow of before-and-afters of young girls’ transformations (warning, includes explicit images). The saddest part about these trends is that, unlike renovating a church, many of these changes can’t be undone – it is very difficult to reset a female body after years of male hormone therapy and breast-removal surgery. It is also a challenge to heal the trauma from the lifestyles that often accompany these outward changes. (Read more.)