Tea at Trianon: Progressives and the Original Sin

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

Friday, July 9, 2021

Progressives and the Original Sin

From Fr Richard Heilman:

We must be totally open and honest, understanding that pride is the greatest barrier to receiving the power of God. This is the sin Satan committed in his choice to refuse to submit to God. This is the “original sin” that infected our first parents – “You will be like God” – and every generation that followed. If we are not careful, we can find it driving just about every sin we commit. Pope St. Gregory the Great counted pride as the “mother of all sins.”

Pride, in fact, is the sin that is most at work to divide and destroy our culture. Think about this, Adam and Eve, to their ruin, believed that “freedom” was defined as the freedom from adhering to the will of God. They wanted the ability to do as they pleased and determine for themselves what was right and wrong. They believed they had “progressed” beyond God.

There’s that seemingly indisputable term: “progress.” Or, as its adherents refer to themselves, “progressives.” By and large, this is a clever modern movement to utilize this term (talking point) – “progress” – to remake whatever they determine to be “Neanderthal thinking,” and no longer applicable, now that their “enlightened” generation (they believe) has “arrived on the scene.”

They claim to have a kind of lofty advanced understanding of things that the “common folk” do not possess. In reality, they are seeking an elite status by simply using “opposite think.” In other words, if the lowly deplorables think one way, they will set themselves apart and above them by taking an opposite position to those troglodytes. They often make the lofty proclamation that they have “evolved.” What have they evolved beyond? GOD!

And, as it has been throughout the history of civilization, the great temptation is to be counted among the “elites” of their time. Today, bolstered by the influencers of our time – such as media, Hollywood, TV, academia, etc. – it becomes intoxicating to be counted among the “in crowd.”

We have now found ourselves in a place where it has become socially acceptable to ridicule, shame, and even physically attack – to bully – those who are not adhering to the new dogma of these radical anti-God elitists. Many are even on the receiving end of this socially acceptable bullying from family members and friends.

Humility opposes pride. Not that we are called to let ourselves be a “whipping boy” to bolster others’ lust for superiority. Humility is a reverence for the truth; a reverence for who we are and what we are called to be; a reverence for the reason we even exist – God. (Read more.)

From Crisis:

In the modern world, people have become intoxicated by the word “diversity.” They have fallen in love with the mere word and not anything to which it could be related. It is asked to be a philosophical principle, but, solitary as it is, is incapable of filling this role. It is an alphabet with no words, the music score without the music. Or, to take a more surrealistic view, it is the sound of one hand clapping.

Illustrations of the futility of employing diversity are plentiful in the world of politics. One illustration should serve all. In 2016, Canada’s federal government called for future Supreme Court justices to be fluent in two languages—French and English. This action was in accord with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s declaration that the Court would seek candidates “representative of the diversity of our great country.” In February 2021, the government announced that it would formally add bilingualism as a legal requirement for appointment to Canada’s Supreme Court. (Read more.)

From Monsignor Pope at the National Catholic Register:

All of this posturing, shamefacedness and outright discrediting of our founding principles and documents is a dangerous shift. It takes away a shared reference point for conversation and debate, replacing it with an anger that dismisses the very principles that should form a basis for national reflection. Without these shared principles as a reference point, debate (or as some prefer “dialogue”) devolves into a shouting match — a kind of power struggle where there is a lot of heat, but no light.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had a very different approach. He took our nation’s founding principles and documents seriously and used them as the very premise of his argument. In effect he summoned us, “America, become what you are! America, live the truth your principles proclaim! You have it in you to do this!”

In his Aug. 28, 1963, “I Have a Dream” speech he said:

“When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, Black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed to the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’

“But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now.”

Note that Rev. King spoke of this land as a “great republic” and of our founding documents as “magnificent words” of “promise.” He called the Lincoln Memorial a “hallowed spot.” There were none of the current notions of America as existentially racist and fundamentally and irredeemably flawed. The very Declaration of Independence, so maligned now by so many, was not wrong in its words, but in its deployment. The Declaration is glorious and a point of (civil) hope. Its words were a catalyst for America to be what she had always (and will always) aspire to be: a land of equal justice, freedom and opportunity under the law.

Today, I fear, we are dangerously far from the colorblind, character-based meritocracy King dreamed of. Increasingly, color is all that matters. If you are person of color, you are oppressed. If you are white, you are privileged. And this means war. The class struggle of the Marxists becomes the race struggle of America. (Read more.)