Tea at Trianon: Religion’s Decline is Reason’s Decline

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

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Religion’s Decline is Reason’s Decline

From Crisis:

These days, people don’t rely on logic and evidence for most of the decisions they make, and they haven’t done so for some time now. They follow the suggestions of their media, their tribe, and their appetites. Even if Christianity is quite reasonable, it just doesn’t seem necessary to most modern people, and many of them are abandoning their faith as a result. On the surface, this seems like a crisis of faith for Western society, but this is really a crisis of reason.

The disregard of logic and respect for objective truth can be seen everywhere. Most prominently, it can be seen in the main leftist causes—gender theory, Marxism, defunding the police, abortion—which are incoherent and not based in actual evidence. Although their adherents claim to “follow the science” and have a great number of scientific authorities endorsing these ideas, the arguments are unscientific and contradictory: gender cannot override sex; perfect material equality is impossible and unjust; removing police inevitably makes communities more dangerous; and abortion does not liberate or empower women but instead enslaves them to their careers and a culture of promiscuity. (Read more.)