Tea at Trianon: The Left and Its Problems with Language

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, September 27, 2022

The Left and Its Problems with Language

From Crisis:

Examples of what I mean abound. Indeed, hardly a day passes without the news media reporting on some incident or other of linguistic nonsense. There was, for example, the refusal of a Supreme Court nominee to answer the question: “What is a woman?” The nominee—now a sworn Justice of the Supreme Court—feared that the gender-benders on the Left would be all over her if she took note of how a woman is different from a man. She claimed that a biologist was needed to answer the question. Since she was not a biologist, the question went unanswered. Seeing and accepting anthropological difference is akin to career suicide on the noisy Left.

Or, what about the senior United States senator from Massachusetts explaining that “pregnant people” are being denied constitutional protection by the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs? She and everyone else knows that only women can conceive and bear children. Nevertheless, she refused to distinguish men from women because of the demand on the Left that equality be understood only as sameness. Anything you can do, I can do. How juvenile and immature, anthropologically speaking.

Decades ago, gender inclusive language had gained a foothold in many parishes and other places where the Catholic liturgy was celebrated. Attempts were always being made to change texts from their supposed “gender exclusivity” to a more agreeable “gender inclusivity.” Sad to say, this silliness still abides in some places. Behind this foolish preoccupation is a desire to whittle away at any linguistic difference so as to suggest that any difference factually, and especially anatomically, is arbitrary and meaningless. (Read more.)