Tea at Trianon: The Return of Animal Sacrifice

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, August 31, 2023

The Return of Animal Sacrifice

From Spiked Online:

We look back with bewilderment at the ritual sacrifice of animals by our ancestors. Whether it was the Celtic people’s sacrifice of livestock to appease pissed-off deities or the Ancient Romans’ slaughter of oxen so that Jupiter might be more sparing with his stormy weather, it was all a bit mad. We would never be so superstitious, we tell ourselves. I’m not sure that’s true. Consider the proposed slaughter of hundreds of thousands of cattle in Europe in the holy name of Net Zero. This is the return of pagan lunacy, surely.

Irish farmers are under pressure to ‘cull up to 200,000 cows’ in order that Ireland might meet its ‘climate goals’, reported the Financial Times at the weekend. The Irish government is considering proposals to bump off that amount of cattle over the next three years to help it achieve a 25 per cent reduction in its agricultural emissions. Cows produce methane, you see, and methane is bad. It’s a greenhouse gas. Farming accounts for 40 per cent of Ireland’s greenhouse-gas emissions, so it has become a natural target for the Net Zero zealots. Every EU member state is under pressure to make strides towards Net Zero, and if that entails the sacrifice of livestock, so be it. Save the planet, slaughter the cows.

It’s so superstitious. A ‘mooted cow massacre’ to try to offset the angry climatic conditions apparently caused by man? If someone can explain how this is any different to an ancient people’s ritualistic killing of a poor bull in a desperate bid to placate the weather gods, I’d be most grateful. In fact, if anything, the proposed cow-culling in Ireland is worse than the paganistic antics of our ill-educated forebears. At least they were wise enough to offer up only one or two beasts to the gods of thunder – the neo-pagans of the Net Zero cult are offering up whole herds to try to assuage the heatwaves and floods they think furious Mother Earth has in store for us. (Read more.)