Tea at Trianon: Banned Books Bunkum

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, October 6, 2022

Banned Books Bunkum

From American Greatness:

Aside from the downright perversity, there is a pile of irony—not to mention hypocrisy—to the book banning hysteria. The same anti-banning radicals are also in the vanguard of the so-called cancel culture, which has led to the censoring of mainstream icons like Dr. Seuss and J.K. Rowling because they didn’t toe the woke party line. Also, Columbus Day has been canceled, and statues of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt have been torn down in various locales.

Additionally, Facebook workers have routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project.

Ultimately, all the Banned Book Week harrumphing is dishonest because no one is actually trying to take away the right to publish any books. The thought of banned books evokes images of totalitarian regimes tossing written material into massive bonfires. In Nazi Germany, the ruling party burned thousands of books written by Jews, communists, and others. The problem that parents have with the books in question is simply that they are not age-appropriate, and have no place in our schools. It has nothing to do with censorship. Our laws prohibit 12-year-olds from going into a store and buying a Playboy or Hustler magazine. Why should schools be allowed to push Lawn Boy on a child of that age? (Read more.)