Tea at Trianon: Antisemitism is the Devil's Flagpole

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, April 30, 2024

Antisemitism is the Devil's Flagpole

Here is a succinct history of antisemitism. I still do not understand Klavan's problem with the title of "Christ the King" since it is very Biblical and one of the most ancient titles of Our Savior Jesus Christ. Jesus was hailed as a king at the Epiphany at the visit of the Magi when still an infant, especially with the mystic gift of gold which symbolized His royalty as a Son of God and Son of David. And on the Cross, Jesus was given the title of "Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews." From Andrew Klavan:

Antisemitism is the Devil’s Flagpole. It always marks the place where evil dwells. It adheres to no one political party, no particular race or nation. But wherever and whenever it appears, it is a signal that something is going very badly wrong in that place and time.

There’s a simple reason this is true. The antisemites think they hate the Jew in front of them, but it’s that other Jew they really hate.

Because the soul of the West was indelibly shaped by Christianity, the God of the West is the Jewish God, the God of Abraham made incarnate in Jesus Christ. Western ideas about God — that he made both men and women in his image, that he identifies with the least among us, that his personality is centered on forgiveness and love — these ideas were all gifts of I AM to his Chosen People. So too were the laws carved on the stones of Sinai and etched over slow centuries into the animate substance of the Jewish heart. Ultimately, the ideas underpinning these laws became the ideas of everyone who followed Jesus Christ. (Read more.)