Tea at Trianon: What is Moral Inversion?

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

Thursday, May 12, 2022

What is Moral Inversion?

From Frank Wright:

What we call ‘progress’ - which is usually taken to mean the moral and intellectual progress of mankind inspired by the Enlightenment – therefore inexorably results in the emptying out of the human soul. Liberalism and technology assist in the process, just as they also help to undermine the Divine. This is the Archimedean point of existence from which all sense, moral and otherwise, flows.
How does Liberalism do this? We are living in the end stage of Liberalism, which I have described elsewhere as the third religion of Man. The others – Fascism and Communism – have already expired in barbarism, as all utopian cults are wont to do.
The end stage of Liberalism explains the relation of Liberalism to moral inversion in several ways. Liberalism is the religion of Liberated Man, of the Liberty of action, of belief, of ownership and expression. To mention these basic precepts is also to indicate how poorly Liberalism is faring today.
Why is Liberalism so ill? Why is there so little liberty left? To recap, the last two years have seen people lose their liberty en masse due to a health emergency feverishly supported by the frail, the elderly and those with an interest in justifying their political legitimacy. The unfreedom of the last two years has given the political class a shot in the arm – a temporary sense of power and of immunity to consequences – which is proving to exact a cost that may be fatal.
The populations of the liberal democracies have seen that their so-called liberties can be taken away. Ditto their property, and also their sense of bodily autonomy. This panic has seen dramatic limitations on free speech applied to mentions of alternative medications, vaccine dangers and injury, statistics on mortality and comorbidity and on various measures such as the indemnity from prosecution of the novel mRNA treatment manufacturers. All this is deeply illiberal, and downright immoral. Perversely, it is the very people who ten years’ previously would have despised Big Pharma and its skulduggery who are most enthusiastic about supporting them now without question. This in itself is a noteworthy moral inversion.
The legal paradox of Liberalism is also evident elsewhere. In the aggressive promotion of individual rights, Liberalism finds itself in a quandary. It becomes necessary to preserve the claims of extreme individuals from the oppression of the majority by enacting laws which restrict majority preference from being expressed and which sanction majority opinion. Minority groups with favourable legal leverage have benefited enormously from Liberalism’s endorsement of deeply illiberal laws to ring fence their chosen beliefs and behaviours with the threat of punishment. Public expressions of fact, as in the case of women, or dislike - as with the hate speech laws of the UK – can and do attract the attention of the police. (Read more.)