Tea at Trianon: Reclaiming the Beauty of the Spheres

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

Saturday, August 9, 2025

Reclaiming the Beauty of the Spheres

From David Bell at Brownstone Institute:

The Tower of Babel was written down in Genesis from ancient oral traditions, but it would be foolish to suggest that it is simply a broken historical narrative of an otherwise forgotten time. Whether Nimrud lived or not, the story was written as much for us today. It tells of powerful fools who convinced themselves, yet again, that they had reached the stage of enlightenment and could finally break out from within the spheres to control them. To do so, they must first empty themselves of humility, of understanding of the human brain within the vastness of the universe, and the ridiculousness of any organic or created being even reaching a place where God, by definition outside of time and space, could be comprehended.
Creating human substitutes with AI is technically clever and somehow deeply pathetic. More so when effort is made to convince us it is better than the real thing. Many will fall for it, as it is an easy path, and in the process, degrade humanity itself. The rise of abuse of humans is not disconnected from the builders of the tower and the creed they sow. It does not require bad intent, just a willingness to empty out the human mind’s ability to converse with the natural world and replace it with a substitute cobbled together by an infinitely inferior creator. (Read more.)