Tea at Trianon: Making a More Family-Friendly America

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

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Making a More Family-Friendly America

From Helen Roy:

Like the Princess of Wales, our lovely new Second Lady will have the opportunity to choose a platform for which she will advocate during her tenure. I hope that Usha chooses exactly what she cares about most, be it harsher punishment for parole violators or saving the American honeybee. But I feel the need to humbly suggest to her that she is now presented, by virtue of her complex calling as a mother, lawyer, and American icon, with a unique opportunity to initiate a more Family Friendly America.
The American family needs encouragement. Morale is low, anxiety is high, and ambivalence is giving way to culture war partisanship. This problem—nebulous and complicated as it is— cries out for attention, for the sake of men who hope to be good fathers, for children who represent the future of American dynamism, and for women, especially, either whose lives feel impossibly strung between work and home, or those who are alienated and disregarded in their lives as mothers, or those who are terrified by the prospect of losing everything they’ve worked to build in order to start a family. Battles in the ongoing feminist/antifeminist debates seem to occur along these faultlines, but we all have much more in common than we think. There are ways to win-win-win here. (Read more.)