Almsgiving of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette

Louis XVI visits a poor family

During Lent we recall the duties of every Christian to apply themselves more fervently to almsgiving. In pre-revolutionary France it was for the King and the Queen to give an example to everyone else in this regard. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette took this duty seriously and throughout their reign did what they could to help the needy.

At the fireworks celebrating the marriage of the young prince and princess in May 1774, there was a stampede in which many people were killed. Louis and Antoinette gave all of their private spending money for a year to relieve the suffering of the victims and their families. They became very popular with the common people as a result, which was reflected in the adulation with which they were received when the Dauphin took his wife to Paris on her first "official" visit in June 1773. Marie-Antoinette's reputation for sweetness and mercy became even more entrenched in 1774, when as the new Queen she asked that the people be relieved of a tax called "The Queen's belt," customary at the beginning of each reign. "Belts are no longer worn," she said. It was only the onslaught of revolutionary propaganda that would eventually destroy her reputation.

Louis XVI often visited the poor in their homes and villages, distributing alms from his own purse. During the difficult winter of 1776, the King oversaw the distribution of firewood among the peasants. Louis was responsible for many humanitarian reforms. He went incognito to hospitals, prisons, and factories so as to gain first-hand knowledge of the conditions in which the people lived and worked.

The King and Queen were patrons of the Maison Philanthropique, a society founded by Louis XVI which helped the aged, blind and widows. The Queen taught her daughter Madame Royale to wait upon peasant children, to sacrifice her Christmas gifts so as to buy fuel and blankets for the destitute, and to bring baskets of food to the sick. Marie-Antoinette took her children with her on her charitable visits. According to Maxime de la Rocheterie:

Sometimes they went to the Gobelins; and the president of the district coming on one occasion to compliment her, she said, "Monsieur you have many destitute but the moments which we spend in relieving them are very precious to us." Sometimes she went to the free Maternity Society which she had founded, where she had authorized the Sisters to distribute sixteen hundred livres for food and fuel every month and twelve hundred for blankets and clothing, without counting the baby outfits which were given to three hundred mothers. At other times she went to the School of Design also founded by her to which she sent one day twelve hundred livres saved with great effort that the rewards might not be diminished nor the dear scholars suffer through her own distress. Again she placed in the house of Mademoiselle O'Kennedy four daughters of disabled soldiers, orphans, for whom she said, "I made the endowment."

The Queen adopted three poor children to be raised with her own, as well overseeing the upbringing of several needy children, whose education she paid for, while caring for their families. She established a home for unwed mothers, the "Maternity Society," mentioned above. She brought several peasant families to live on her farm at Trianon, building cottages for them. There was food for the hungry distributed every day at Versailles, at the King's command. During the famine of 1787-88, the royal family sold much of their flatware to buy grain for the people, and themselves ate the cheap barley bread in order to be able to give more to the hungry.

Madame de la Tour du Pin, a lady-in-waiting of Marie-Antoinette, recorded in her spirited Memoirs the daily activities at Versailles, including the rumors and the gossip. Her pen does not spare Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, which is why I find the following account to be of interest. Every Sunday, Marie-Antoinette would personally take up a collection for the poor, which the courtiers resented since they preferred to have the money on hand for gambling. The queen supported several impoverished families from her own purse. As Madame de la Tour du Pin describes:

We had to be there before seven, for the Queen entered before the chiming of the clock. Beside her door would be one of the two Curés of Versailles. He would hand her a purse and she would go around to everyone, taking up a collection and saying: "For the poor, if you please." Each lady had her 'écu' of six francs ready in her hand and the men had their 'louis.' The Curé would follow the Queen as she collected this small tax for her poor people, a levy which often totaled as much as much as one hundred 'louis' and never less than fifty. I often heard some of the younger people, including the most spendthrift, complaining inordinately of this almsgiving being forced upon them, yet they would not have thought twice of hazarding a sum one hundred times as large in a game of chance, a sum much larger than that levied by the Queen. (Memoirs of Madame de la Tour du Pin: Laughing and Dancing Our Way to the Precipice, p. 74)

Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette contributed a great deal throughout their reign to the care of orphans and foundlings. They patronized foundling hospitals, which the Queen often visited with her children. Above is a picture of an occasion in February, 1790, after their removal to Paris, when the king, the queen and their children toured such a facility, where the nuns cared for abandoned babies and little children. As is reported by Maxime de la Rocheterie, the young Dauphin, soon to be an orphan himself, was particularly drawn to the foundlings and gave all of his small savings to aid them.

The king and queen did not see helping the poor as anything extraordinary, but as a basic Christian duty. The royal couple's almsgiving stopped only with their incarceration in the Temple in August 1792, for then they had nothing left to give but their lives.

(Sources: Memoirs of Madame de la Tour du Pin, Marguerite Jallut's and Philippe Huisman's Marie-Antoinette, Vincent Cronin's Louis and Antoinette, Antonia Fraser's The Journey, Madame Campan's Memoirs, Mémoires de madame la Duchesse de Tourzel, Maxime de la Rocheterie's The Life of Marie-Antoinette)

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What Lies Beneath the Epstein Scandals

 From TFP:

The Epstein scandal is only possible because a corrupt liberal culture already contains so much of the depravity found in the files. It is mainstream and permeates many sectors. Films and media portray and celebrate immoral relationships everywhere. Fashion and pop culture depict and even glorify the most depraved behaviors. Memes and social media stretch the limits of decency with shock content that breaks all the rules. The general public shows an appetite for the lurid details of these scandals that suggest an implicit complicity with such lewdness.

When the Epstein iceberg appeared on the horizon, the ground was prepared. People are drawn to these revelations that promote all that is irrational, corrupt and impure. The tip of an iceberg presupposes a vast ice mass beneath the freezing surface. Thus, the high-profile debauchery that fills the headlines presupposes a sinister underworld drawing from all levels of society, corrupting society as a whole. Local networks of iniquity must also exist parallel to those of Epstein. These networks must have their Epstein-like figures that facilitate the spread of vice and lewdness. They have their dark secrets. The only difference is that their characters remain hidden.

Indeed, many have tried to frame the Epstein debate as a class struggle between corrupt elites versus the uncorrupt common people. However, the truth is that the whole of society is rotten and involved in the general decadence. Any return to order must involve a general moral regeneration. (Read more.)

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Courtship Rituals

 From Ross Arlen Tieken:

One of the great generators of loneliness in my immediate circle of students is the lack of careful, public, and social courtship rituals. Even the most well-meaning of junior high boys, even if charged with virtue and self-discipline, is mostly unable to control himself alone with a girl, or prevent themselves from grotesque and inept pawing in an environment that simply accepts public displays of erotically-charged affection from pubescent young people.

Besides being revolting, the young lovers tend to go too far too quickly, and having achieved the cheap imitation of intimacy, they find themselves rightly disappointed and hurt, and yet longing desperately for more. Bitterness colors their experience, and love, eros, longing, and the opposite sex are cast in their eyes as a tragedy, an insupportable burden. The option then is overindulgence or cynicism.

This is not their fault obviously. When our children suddenly bloom into adulthood, they are meant to be given proper forms which establish the appropriate behavior for courtship. At 13, you talk with them (not on the phone, not over text, not over Snapchat… ever). At 14, you may talk and walk with them. At 15, you may spend time together in the company of family and friends. At 16, you may go on a chaperoned date and a dance. Etc.

Instead of this careful circling of each other, which allows genuine regard and understanding to grow, increases respect for boundaries and personhood, preserves the mystery of the body, socially establishes a couple, and beautifies the story of love, we simply toss teens in the back of the bus with a bluetooth speaker, give them an anonymous line of visual communication, and hope that our teaching will preserve their innocence. (Read more.)

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The Many Homes of Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte

Via Tiny-Librarian. The daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette lived in many places in the course of her turbulent life, and the print shows some of them, including Versailles and Frohsdorf. Share

Andrew Mountbatten Arrested

 From The Truth Barrier:

I continue to find Alex Jones’ commentary often the most summative. (Is that a word or may I invent it?) I also find that his often unintentional humor helps “tell the story.” Link here. I just found myself laughing uproariously at his recent take on Les Wexner. If you want to “understand” Les Wexner, in all this, Kirby Sommers has documented him most extensively, by far, yet Alex Jones is the one who animates the absurdity the best. (Read more.)

 

From Fox News:

Thames Valley Police arrested Andrew earlier Thursday morning on suspicion of misconduct in public office, and he is in custody. He turned 66 Thursday. 

Police are carrying out searches at addresses in Berkshire and Norfolk. He has yet to be charged with any wrongdoing. He can be held for a maximum of 96 hours before being charged or released.

Misconduct in public office is an offense in abuse or neglect of power or responsibilities by someone holding public office. It applies to people in roles across the U.K. government and public services, including elected officials, civil servants, the police and judiciary, but also some others working in public services.

Thames Valley Police, which covers areas west of London, said Andrew was arrested after a "thorough assessment," with an investigation now opened. (Read more.)

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The Pornification of Cinema

 From Elisabeth Stone:

Desire needs to be surrounded by structure, things such as family, honor, reputation. Without it, desire becomes unbridled lust, a fire that consumes anything it touches. Structure is the only thing that can create tension, and tension creates longing, and longing is what gives us depth.

It turns out that giving in to your every desire does not lead to fulfillment, but to a road of emptiness, to the inability to experience romance or love with true depth and actual meaning.

It is no wonder, then, that in our culture people chase the only high they can find, which is the thrill of new beginnings, the rush of meeting someone new. When you build romance on something as shallow as lust and impulse, the fire will burn bright, yes, but it will die out just as fast.

Look at Bridgerton. It presents itself like an old-world romance. The gowns. The courtship. The family names. The dramatic rules. It wants the aesthetic of tradition. It wants the tension. It wants the feeling of something structured and meaningful.

But it doesn’t actually believe in any of it. (Read more.)

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Lent at Versailles

Versailles is not usually associated with Lenten penance, but fasting and abstinence, as well as some mortifications, were observed there by many during the old regime. For one thing, there would be no plays or operas performed; all the public theaters were closed in France during Lent. The daughters of Louis XV were known for their scrupulous observance of fasting and abstinence, although Madame Victoire found such penance especially trying. According to Madame Campan:

Without quitting Versailles, without sacrificing her easy chair, she [Madame Victoire] fulfilled the duties of religion with punctuality, gave to the poor all she possessed, and strictly observed Lent and the fasts. The table of Mesdames acquired a reputation for dishes of abstinence....Madame Victoire was not indifferent to good living, but she had the most religious scruples respecting dishes of which it was allowable to partake at penitential times....The abstinence which so much occupied the attention of Madame Victoire was so disagreeable to her, that she listened with impatience for the midnight hour of Holy Saturday; and then she was immediately supplied with a good dish of fowl and rice, and sundry other succulent viands.

Their nephew Louis XVI was also known for his fastidious observance of Lent, as recorded once again by the faithful Madame Campan:

Austere and rigid with regard to himself alone, the King observed the laws of the Church with scrupulous exactness. He fasted and abstained throughout the whole of Lent. He thought it right that the queen should not observe these customs with the same strictness. Though sincerely pious, the spirit of the age had disposed his mind to toleration.

Some of the King's tolerant behavior included the permitting of certain games at court during Lent. During the Lent of 1780, the Austrian ambassador Count Mercy-Argenteau was shocked to discover Louis XVI playing blind man's bluff with Marie-Antoinette and some members of the Court. Count Mercy described the scandalous scene to the Empress Maria Theresa:

Amusements have been introduced of such noisy and puerile character that they are little suited to Lenten meditations, and still less to the dignity of the august personages who take part in them. They are games resembling blind man's bluff, that first lead to the giving of forfeits, and then to their redemption by some bizarre penance ; the commotion is kept up sometimes until late into the night. The number of persons who take part in these games, both of the Court and the town, makes them still more unsuitable ; every one is surprised to see that the King plays them with great zest, and that he can give himself up wholly to such frivolities in such a serious condition of State affairs as obtains at present.

Given the long hours that Louis XVI devoted to affairs of state and the fact that people often complained that he was too serious and reserved, it seems that Mercy should have been pleased to see the King come out of his shell a little and take some recreation. But then, Mercy often tried to cast Louis in an unfavorable light. As far as the Empress was concerned, however, Lent was not the time for any games. Louis' devotion was sincere all the same; he was constant in prayer and good works, observing the fasts of the Church for Lent and the Ember days even throughout his imprisonment.

The King's sister, Madame Elisabeth, also steadfastly kept the discipline of Lent in both good times and bad. In the Temple prison, the jailers mocked the princess' attempts to keep Lent as best she could. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette's daughter, Madame Royale, who shared her aunt's imprisonment, recorded it thus:

Having no fish, she asked for eggs or other dishes on fast-days. They refused them, saying that in equality there was no difference of days; there were no weeks, only decades. They brought us a new almanac, but we did not look at it. Another time, when my aunt again asked for fast-day food they answered: "Why, citoyenne, don't you know what has taken place? none but fools believe all that." She made no further requests.

As for Marie-Antoinette herself, she did not fast and abstain through every day of Lent as Louis did; her health did not permit it. However, after baby Madame Sophie died in 1787, it was noted that the Queen became more fervent in her devotions, especially during Lent. Jean Chalon in Chère Marie-Antoinette (p.235) notes that in 1788 she gave orders that her table strictly comply with all the regulations of the Church. Even the Swedish ambassador remarked: "The queen seems to have turned devout."

(Photo: http://www.cyrilalmeras.com/)
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Tranny Shooters

 From Tierney's Real News:

These are the people who liberal women defend and want to make a “protected class.” Why? If nothing else, I hope this latest nightmare will encourage us all to stop using the fake word “transgender” or “trans” to excuse away this madness. Men aren’t women. This man was NOT a “trans woman.” IMHO, women didn’t go through feminism to end up being surrounded by medicated men in dresses in our locker rooms, in our boardrooms, in Congress, playing in our sports and murdering their families in our name. Language is the way that liberals twist, deceive, and gaslight. I, for one, am going to try hard to remove the words “trans” and “transgender” from my vocabulary.

On February 16, 2026, at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena near Providence, Rhode Island, during a high school boys' hockey game, a 56-year-old male, identified as Robert Dorgan (also known as Roberta Dorgano or Esposito), opened fire around 2:30pm ET killing his ex-wife and son - and critically injuring three others in what Rhode Island authorities bizarrely described as a “familicide stemming from a domestic dispute.” JOKE. Aidan Dorgan, 23, was murdered by his “sick” father - alongside his mother Rhonda, 52, at his younger brother’s hockey game.

Aidan’s grandparents were also among those shot. They are currently in critical condition, fighting for their lives. They were there because it was literally Senior Night at their grandson’s high school hockey game. Rhonda’s youngest son Colin Dorgan, 17, who is captain of the Blackstone Valley Schools’ hockey team, watched his father murder his brother and mother from the ice and shoot his grandparents. Colin and his sister Ava, a 20-year-old nursing student, are heartbroken by the loss of their mother and older brother. (Read more.)

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Fully Human Lives: The Jazz Greatness of Kurt Elling

 Jazz is to some people what opera is to me. From Mark Judge at Chronicles:

Elling is the premier male jazz vocalist in America. He’s been nominated for eight Grammys and won two. Elling also very plainly adores American jazz music. That seems like an obvious thing to say about a jazz singer, but in Elling’s case, it is clear that his love for it is all-consuming because it is infectious. His heart seemed to expand whenever he lovingly spoke of “this music” or of artists like Duke Ellington, Wayne Shorter, and John Scofield.

Even as so much of our culture stares into a digital AI void , the best music, Elling said, still comes from acoustic instruments, which hit you in the “right here.”  When he said “here” Elling put a fist to his chest—as well as to the backside and the brain. No matter how much AI takes over, Elling was saying, we are souls. We want to live fully human lives and feel things with all of our being.

I’ve been following Elling since 2008, when I first saw him perform—and at the same location. Elling, a former divinity student at the University of Chicago, had then commingled the lyrics of the jazz standard “My Foolish Heart” with the poetry of St. John of the Cross. Seeing him do this in concert for the first time, I was seized with a kind of spiritual rapture. As the Biblical translator Stephen Mitchell once said about encountering God, it was a feeling so big that it wasn’t inside of me but I was inside of it.

In 2010 I was able to interview the singer at Blues Alley in Georgetown. This time around, in 2026, I got to meet Elling backstage before the show. He was joined by Daniel Jamieson, the conductor of the new Strathmore Jazz Orchestra.

“When I agreed to take on the role of conductor of the Strathmore Jazz Orchestra,” Jamieson said,

one of my core stipulations was that this orchestra would never function as a backup band. The musicians themselves are the heart of the project. I want this ensemble to be presented with the same artistic importance and visibility as any guest soloist we bring in. The players are the identity of this orchestra, and I am committed to building a culture that places them at the center of every performance. 

There was no mistake about that at this concert as the orchestra was the beating heart of the performance. (Read more.)

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Marie-Antoinette: Lent and Abstinence

From East of the Sun, West of the Moon, via Vive la Reine:

At Versailles, Lent would have been marked by sermons given at least once a week, depending on who was chosen to give the special sermons and how often they were able to–or wanted to–preach. Marie Antoinette wrote to her mother on March 15th of 1773 on the subject:

This Lent we have a very good preacher three times a week; he talks of the good moral principles in the Gospels and tells everyone many truths; however I prefer the Massillon series of sermons for Lent, because they are more to my taste.

The ‘Massillon’ Marie Antoinette referred to in her letter was Jean-Baptiste Massilon (24 June 1663 - 28 September 1742); a famous bishop and preacher, well known for eloquent and poetical sermons which deal less with questions of dogma and more with issues of compassion, morality and humanity.

One of Massilon’s Lent sermons, ‘On the Fast of Lent,'  was possibly written for a sermon given at the chapel of Versailles–it certainly seems as if he was targeting those in the upper reaches of society, in any case. His words may have resonated with the young Marie Antoinette, who had been exposed to the hypocrisy of many courtiers–including those among her new family–at Versailles; who herself was turning frequently to amusements and pleasures, perhaps to occupy her mind with something other than her sorrows; and who wrote to her mother that she did not always find abstaining from meat to be easy. Perhaps Massilon’s words reminded her that, despite her mild complaints about abstaining from meat, that if those who had almost nothing gladly fasted from meat during Lent, that she–who had everything at her fingertips–could certainly abstain as well.

Of particular interest is a passage, targeted at those who complained about the Catholic tradition of abstaining from meat during Lent and sought dispensations for avoiding it:

Were you, however, to examine impartially into the state of your health, you perhaps would discover that the constant aversion you feel for self-denial and penance, has led you into an error on this subject; and that you imagine that your constitution is weak, because you never have had piety and resolution sufficient to induce you to try its strength.

If this be the case, as it probably is, can you pretend that the very reason which makes penance more necessary, is a sufficient plea for a dispensation? Your imaginary weakness is itself a crime, and ought to be expiated by extraordinary austerities, instead of exempting you from those which are common to all the faithful.

If the Church were to make any distinction among her children; if she was inclined to grant privileges to some, and none to others, it would be to those whose lowly arid dependent station exposes them to the hardships and fatigues of toilsome labour who suffer from the severities of the seasons, from hunger, from thirst, from public oppressions, and from private wrongs who have only a distant view of the pleasures which this world affords and whose happiness has attained its greatest height when a bare sufficiency is procured for themselves and families. But as for those on whom the world has lavished its choicest gifts whose greatest unhappiness arises from the satiety and disgust which is inseparable from sensual felicity, they can pretend to no other distinction than that of increased austerity, and a prolongation of the canonical rigours of penance.

But what is their conduct? The opulent, the independent, the higher classes of society the men who alone seem to need repentance the men for whom this penitential time is principally intended, are almost the only ones who plead for a dispensation; whilst the poor artisan, the indigent labourer, who eats his bread in the sweat of his brow whose days of feasting and merriment would be to the rich man days of penance and mortification, whilst he, I say, bows down with respect and submission to this holy law, and even in his poverty retrenches from his usual pittance, and makes the time of Lent a time of extraordinary suffering and penance

But, my God! the time will come when thou wilt openly espouse the cause of thy holy law, and confound the advocates of human concupiscence. The Pharisees in the gospel disfigured their faces, in order that their fasting might be remarked by men: but this is not the hypocrisy of the present day; no: after a year spent in excess, in murmurings, and in sin, the pampered disciples of a crucified Jesus put on a pale, a weak appearance at the commencement of this holy time, for the sole purpose of setting up a plausible pretext to violate in peace the law of fasting and abstinence.

The full sermon can be read here. (Read more.)

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Democrats Defund DHS

 From AMAC:

Democrats seem determined to undermine homeland security – now defunding DHS, which includes a wide swath of federal law enforcement. The potential for national disruption is high. Democrats target ICE enforcement of administrative warrants and deportation orders, but most Americans want rule of law.

In a credible February poll, 73 percent of Americans think entering the US illegally is “breaking the law,” 61 percent support “deporting” illegal aliens –  95 percent of Republicans, 64 percent of swing voters – and 58 percent reject Democrat calls to “defund ICE,” with 54 percent expressly supporting ICE.

In states like Maine, a Democrat-dominated “sanctuary” state, citizens support ICE, 84 percent in one poll supporting ICE across the state. Yet Democrats persist.

Democrats are now blocking all DHS funding – including for ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, Transportation Security Administration, US Secret Service, US Coast Guard, FEMA, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, National Infrastructure Protection Center, National Infrastructure Advisory Council – which advises the president on national cybersecurity threats.

While “essential personnel” continue to work unpaid, Democrats have adopted a lose-lose posture. They seem content to allow threats to proliferate as and if manning falls, to attack federal law enforcement – ICE – which has public support.

As of Monday, February 16, the Associated Press is reporting neither congressional Democrats nor the White House see “signs of compromise … in their battle” over ICE, which has now triggered another indefinite “partial government shutdown.” (Read more.)

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How the Kingdom of Aragon Built a Mediterranean Empire

 From The Collector:

In the 9th century, the County of Aragon was part of the Frankish dominion, ruled over by the Carolingians. Its people had weathered the storm that accompanied the fall of the Roman Empire and the ensuing chaos afterwards. In the 900s, Aragon came under the rule of the Kingdom of Pamplona (also known as Navarre). The county’s capital was located in the small city of Jaca in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula.

After the death of King Sancho III of Navarre in 1035, his kingdom was partitioned into multiple territories. One of the territories contained Sobrarbe, Ribagorza, and Aragon, all of which went to different nobles. However, the rulers of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza both died, enabling Sancho’s illegitimate son Ramiro to annex both territories into his realm. Despite being nominally linked to Navarre, Ramiro’s expanded Aragon now became one of the larger states in the region.

Ramiro never personally called himself the King of Aragon, although his subjects referred to him as king, and he is known to history Ramiro I of Aragon. His rule was brief and focused on expanding the kingdom’s borders. In 1063, he died while unsuccessfully besieging the city of Graus from the Castilians. He was succeeded by Sancho Ramirez, his eldest son. (Read more.)

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"If Ever I Cease To Love"

It is Mardi Gras. "If Ever I Cease To Love" was once the theme song of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It is a song which does not make sense, but then neither does love, most of the time. Tomorrow it will be Lent.

In a house, in a square in a quadrant
In a street, in a lane, in a road.

Turn to the left on the right hand
You see there my true love's abode

I go there a courting, And cooing to my love like a dove;
And swearing on my bended knee, if ever I cease to love,
May sheep-heads grow on apple trees, If ever I cease to love.

Chorus:
If ever I cease to love, if ever I cease to love,
May the moon be turn'd to green cream cheese,
If ever I cease to love

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Marco and Munich

 From Tierney's Real News:

Marco Rubio just gave a keynote address at the 62nd Munich Security Conference in Europe, the premier global forum for international security policy.

His speech is one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard against Godless Communism - and it succinctly explains the nightmare and foolishness of Europe (and America) abandoning God and national sovereignty to appease the atheist one-world-order Globalists - in 20 minutes.

If you only listen to one thing this weekend - let it be this. In fact, I think this speech is so powerful of an explanation that it should be played in every Christian church in America on Sunday morning. I’m not kidding.

Rubio said that Europe and U.S. belong together bound by “centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry” and that since WW2 mistakes have been made:

• Outsourcing “our sovereignty to international institutions”

• Imposing energy policies that impoverish our people “to appease a climate cult”

• Opening doors to mass migration “that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people.”

Rubio says “We owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward to rebuild.”

Some highlights:

MARCO RUBIO: “We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline!

We are prepared to do this alone but it is our preference, and our hope, to do this together with you, our friends in Europe.

America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The men who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories, the traditions, and the Christian faith of our ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.

We are part of one civilization, Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have now fallen heir.

And if at times we disagree, our disagreements come from our profound sense of concern about a Europe with which we are connected, not just economically, not just militarily. We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally. We want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe and the West must survive.” (Read more.)

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Chevalier de Bayard: The Knight Without Fear and Beyond Reproach

 From The Medieval Scholar:

Pierre Terrail, known as Chevalier de Bayard, a man who’s resolve was unyielding. Praised by his contemporaries for his gaiety and kindness he was known as “The Good Knight.” Fearless and unwavering in battle, he’d be remembered as the knight without fear and beyond reproach. Bayard, a descendant of a noble French family with a strong military tradition, was born at Château Bayard in Dauphiné, near Pontcharra in southern France. His family had a history of sacrifice in battle, with three generations of his Terrail ancestors falling in combat from 1356 to 1465. 

Bayard began his career as a page to Duke Charles I of Savoy, but in 1490, the Duke passed away. At just thirteen, Bayard impressed King Charles VIII of France with his exceptional horsemanship during a display for the Duke of Savoy, earning him the nickname “piquet” which means spur. In 1490, Bayard began serving as a man-at-arms in the household of Louis de Luxembourg, seigneur de Ligny, a close confidant of King Charles VIII of France. Even in his youth, Bayard was admired for his good looks, charm, and skill in jousting. On July 20, 1494, Bayard took part in a tournament in Lyons attended by King Charles and his court. Although not yet eighteen, he won the highest honors, impressing the king once more. (Read more.)

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Marie-Antoinette and Carnival

I usually do not use photos from the 1938 Marie Antoinette film; the costumes were glitzy and the wigs, too platinum. However, Norma Shearer's portrayal of Marie-Antoinette was soulfully authentic; the photo above captures the zest of the young Dauphine taking Paris by storm at Carnival. As a young girl, Marie-Antoinette embraced the festivities of Carnival with alacrity, especially the masked balls. Since members of the royal family were constantly surrounded by semi-liturgical ceremonies, at the masked ball the princes and princesses could engage in something vaguely resembling normal human interaction. The wearing of a mask, although it did not always endow total anonymity, lightened the tight protocol so that royals could mingle and converse with others in society.

In February of 1773, Marie-Antoinette wrote to her mother Empress Maria Theresa, relating how she went with her husband the Dauphin Louis to the Opera ball in Paris:

We went- M. le Dauphin, the comte, and comtesse de Provence and I- last Thursday to the Opera Ball in Paris; we kept the utmost secret. We were all masked; still, we were recognized after half an hour. The duc de Chartres and the duc de Bourbon, who were dancing at the Palais Royal right next door came to meet us and asked us pressingly to go and dance at Madame de Chartres's; but I excused myself from it as I had the King's permission for the Opera only. We returned here at seven and heard Mass before going to bed. Everybody is delighted with M. le Dauphin's willingness to have this outing since he was believed to be averse to it. (Secrets of Marie Antoinette: A Collection of Letters, edited by Olivier Bernier. New York: Fromm International, 1986, p. 102)

In January of 1774, Louis and Antoinette once again ventured incognito into Paris to the Opera ball, accompanied by Louis' two brothers and their wives. Here is Comte Mercy's description of the event in a letter to Empress Maria Theresa:

The three Princes and Princesses came on the 30th of January to the masked ball at the Opera; measures had been so well taken that they remained a long while without being recognized by anyone. M. le Dauphin [Louis] behaved splendidly; he went about the ball talking indiscriminately to all those he met on his path, in a very gay and decorous manner introducing the kind of jests suited to the occasion. The public was enchanted with this conduct on the part of M. le Dauphin, it made a great sensation in Paris and they did not fail, as always happens in these cases, to attribute to Madame la Dauphine the improvement they noticed in her consort's way of showing himself....

The Princes and Princesses came back a second time to the Opera ball on Sunday, the 6th of this month [February]; but this time their presence was less well concealed and consequently there was a greater influx of people to the theater. However, nothing improper or embarrassing resulted, and Madame la Dauphine, who did not unmask, drew on herself all the applause and admiration with which all the public always hastens to do homage to her, both owing to the people to whom she spoke and the things she said to them. (Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette before the Revolution by Nesta Webster, p. 21)

It was at the Opera ball on January 30 that Marie-Antoinette chatted with Count Fersen behind her mask, in the presence of her husband and in-laws, but no eyebrows were raised by this playful incident. The Empress Maria Theresa was more concerned with her daughter getting sick from exhaustion than with anything else, and at the end of the 1773 Carnival wrote: "Thank God it is all over...." (Secrets of Marie Antoinette, p. 104) Later, she expressed reservations about the young Queen's taste in fashion. On March 5, 1775, after Louis XVI had ascended the throne of France, the Empress penned:

Thank God the endless Carnival is over! That exclamation will make me look very old, but I must admit that all those late evenings were too tiring; I feared for the Court's health and for the order of it's usual habits, which is an essential point....In the same way I can't prevent myself raising a point which many gazettes repeat all too often; it is the coiffure you use; they say that from the forehead it is thirty-six inches high, and with so many feathers and ribbons to adorn it! (Ibid.,p.159)

Marie-Antoinette responded by saying:

Although Carnival did amuse me a great deal, I agree that it was time it was ended. We are now back to our usual routine....It is true that I take some care of the way I dress; and, as for feathers, everyone wears them, and it would be extraordinary not to wear them. Their height has been much curtailed since the end of the balls....(Ibid., 160)

After Marie-Antoinette became a mother in December of 1778, her participation in Carnival was greatly mitigated, since she preferred not be too far away from her babies at night. It is sad that the enjoyment of the masquerade balls during her teenage years would later lead to many false rumors about her lifestyle. Share

"Bus Tape" Hoax

 From Tierney's Real News:

FLYNN: “Mike Pence and Paul Ryan wanted Trump out. They had a plan for when Trump steps down, they would step in.”

In other words, Pence didn’t just decide to become a traitor on J6. He was a traitor from the very beginning working with Paul Ryan and his pals in the Koch-funded Freedom Caucus.

Why is this important? Because many of the same bizarre elements and people involved in the Guthrie case were also involved in the “bus tape” hoax. CONNECT THE DOTS WITH ME.

In 2018, I suggested - in my first blog - that the “infamous” bus tape that was released on Trump right before the 2016 election could have been engineered in the NBC studios at the Today Show and used to smear and set up Trump - to force him to step out of the race.

If the hoax worked and drove out Trump before the 2016 election in November - it’s obvious that Pence would step up and run for President - instead of Trump - and Speaker Paul Ryan would be his VP - line of succession. (Read more.)

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C.S. Lewis and the Greatest Arthurian Epic

 From The Library of Lewis and Tolkien:

Violent, lewd, celebrating deception and sexual immorality on the one hand; gracious, sensitive, revering mercy and humility and rejecting all that is crude, ugly, and obscene on the other — it would be natural to conclude that Ascham and Lewis were talking about two different books, two different portrayals of the Arthurian legend. Lewis must be demonstrating the way such stories could appear in a noble and Christian light, contrary to the book lambasted by Ascham.

The only problem is that Ascham and Lewis were not discussing two different books. They were both describing — or claiming to describe — the same book: Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century Arthurian epic, Le Morte d’Arthur.

Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur is a massive, sprawling narrative that chronicles the rise, decline, and eventual downfall of Camelot — the adventures, and later the breaking, of the fellowship of the Round Table. All of what we regard today as the classic, quintessential features of the Arthurian story are there (and then some): Arthur’s sword Excalibur; the wizard Merlin; the Lady — really Ladies — of the Lake; the quest of the Holy Grail, the healing of the Maimed King and restoration of the Waste Land; Lancelot and Guinevere’s love affair; the rebellion of Arthur’s ill-begotten son, Mordred; Arthur’s final departure over the waves into the distant isle of Avalon. More than any other single work, Le Morte d’Arthur is the one that later storytellers have most drawn upon, whether Tennyson’s cycle of blank-verse poems Idylls of the King, T.H. White’s novel The Once and Future King, or John Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur. (Read more.)

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Carnival

 P. Bernaigne, "A Carnival Ball"

José Benlliure y Gil, "At the Carnival"

Carnival season officially began on January 6 and ends on Shrove Tuesday or "Fat Tuesday," called Mardi Gras. It is now Shrovetide, when most parishes used to have Forty Hours devotions in order to atone for the excesses of Carnival. Outside of certain exotic places such as New Orleans, LA and Bellefonte, PA, Carnival is not celebrated to the extent that it once was in the Christian west, when the season was a time of joyful merry-making before undertaking the rigors of Lent. At home, we usually have a "king cake;" HERE is an easy recipe. Amid the festivities, the traditions of the liturgy remind us that Lent is near. Not only Lent approaches, but death as well; the hour of reckoning for each soul is unknown.

"If Ever I Cease To Love" was the theme song of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It is a song which does not make sense, but then neither does love, most of the time.

In a house, in a square in a quadrant
In a street, in a lane, in a road.

Turn to the left on the right hand
You see there my true love's abode

I go there a courting, and cooing to my love like a dove;
And swearing on my bended knee, if ever I cease to love,
May sheep-heads grow on apple trees, if ever I cease to love.

Chorus:
If ever I cease to love, if ever I cease to love,
May the moon be turn'd to green cream cheese,
If ever I cease to love.

Winslow Homer, "Dressing for Carnival"

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Trump Exonerated on Epstein

 If Trump were implicated in the Epstein Files, surely the Biden administration would have made it known. From Tierney's Real News:

“The Miami Herald, the first to report on the document, reported that the local Palm Beach Police launched the first investigation into Epstein’s network in 2005.

The police chief’s name -- Michael Reiter -- is redacted from the document on the Department of Justice’s website, but the information in the FBI statement tracks with previously public information about Reiter’s role in the investigation that began in 2005.

A Palm Beach woman reported that her 14-year-old stepdaughter had been recruited to give Epstein a massage and was assaulted.

Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter eventually assembled a roster of 40 underage victims. When the local district attorney refused to prosecute the case, Chief Reiter went to the FBI, triggering a federal investigation that ultimately led to Epstein’s disappointing first conviction —formally, a “non-prosecution agreement”— in 2009.

The newly released DOJ files included the transcript of a 2019 FBI interview with Chief Reiter when Epstein was prosecuted under President Trump. At one point, Reiter mentioned Trump. Chief Reiter told the FBI that in 2006, Trump was one of the first people to call his office after Epstein’s charge became public record. “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump told Reiter. (Read more.)

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Real Classical Education

 From American Mind:

In 1991, Pastor Wilson published Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning: An Approach to Distinctively Christian Education. This book remains the blueprint for Christian Classical Education across America. Its title was inspired by “The Lost Tools of Learning,” a 1947 lecture by Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957). Outside Pastor Wilson’s movement, Sayers is mostly known, if at all, as the author of some moderately entertaining detective stories. Her translations of Dante for Penguin Classics are still in print, but so dated as to seem older than the medieval original.

“The Lost Tools of Learning” is the sort of text that one stumbles across randomly in secondhand bookshops, usually after it has been deaccessioned by a university library on account of a conspicuous lack of scholarly interest. It was first presented as a lecture for a summer school in Oxford, and later published as a pamphlet. No doubt Sayers herself quickly forgot about it. She seems to have written it in a hurry: 20 minutes of material is stretched to an hour’s length. Perhaps this is why schoolteachers love it so much.

Educated English people tend to dismiss Sayers’ work, on the rare occasions they condescend to notice it. They also scoff at the Christian Classical Education movement and sneer at the Americans who take part in it. People like Pastor Wilson must seem barbarians to them. But are the English themselves really so civilized these days? (Read more.)

 

There are many Pied-Pipers now! From AND Magazine:

Teachers' actions nationwide are part of a broader effort under the umbrella of the Sunrise Movement. Sunrise is funded by the usual collection of radical billionaires, including George Soros, and radical dark money entities like Arabella. It began with a focus on environmental issues, but by this point, it is dedicated to virtually every radical proposition you could name, with a particular emphasis on radicalizing students and organizing in schools.

In January and February 2026, National Education Association (NEA) President Becky Pringle participated in a virtual event series hosted by the Sunrise Movement titled "Roadmap to Political Revolution." The event description read: “It’s time we dream — and organize — at the scale that Trump and billionaires are creating nightmares. 2026 is the year we break it all open…We need mass disruption to stop authoritarian consolidation.”

The Sunrise moderator of the event described Sunrise as having a “deep partnership” with the NEA when introducing Pringle to webinar participants. During the event, Pringle characterized the current administration under Donald Trump as a “dictatorship” and “nightmare,” calling for a “big and non-cooperative” movement leading toward mass student strikes on May Day (May 1, 2026). (Read more.)

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Hellelil and Hildebrand: the Meeting on the Turret Stairs

 

From ArtNet:

Burton’s awareness and interest in the specific story of Hellelil and Heldebrand can likely be traced to his friend Whitley Stokes, a Celtic scholar who translated and published the medieval Danish ballad in the mid-1850s.

In the story, the noblewoman Helleil fell in love with one of her personal guards, Heldebrand, Prince of Engelland. When her father finds out about the affair, he, along with his seven sons, set out to kill Heldebrand. In an act of honor, Heldebrand fights her kin, killing the father and six of the seven brothers. Hellelil, watching from afar, calls out to her beloved before he slays the youngest brother, asking him to stay his hand. Though Heldebrand spared him, the brother took it as a moment of opportunity and dealt Heldebrand a mortal blow in return. Ultimately, after relating the series of events to her mother, Helleil died of a broken heart.

Like many medieval love stories, it is a tragic one, and Burton takes focus on the poignant last meeting of the ill-fated lovers. Hellelil is turned away in sorrow, stepping up the turret stairs to safety, and a trampled white rose, a symbol of innocence and purity, lies trampled near her feet. Heldebrand moves down the stairs to go meet her father, brothers, and, unbeknownst to him, his demise, holding her arm in a farewell embrace. It is a tender, prescient moment that bears the weight of what is to come. (Read more.)

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Saint Valentine's Day

This morning I was perusing Michelle Lovric's exquisite anthology Love Letters and found a line from a letter of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her husband Robert Browning: "You have lifted up my soul into the light of your soul, and I am not ever likely to mistake it for the common daylight." Beautiful. People really knew how to express affection in those days. I then went in search of her poems, still incomparable after so many years. Here is the most famous one:

Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sonnets from the Portuguese XLIII How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

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An Unlikely Romance: King Pippin and Queen Bertrada

 From Kim Rendfeld:

The marriage was also a reward for the loyalty of Bertrada’s father, Haribert, the count of Laon. In October 741, Mayor of the Palace Charles Martel died, setting off a war for succession between Pippin and Karlomann, his sons by his first wife, and Grifo, his son by his second wife. Grifo and his mother fled to Laon, which was in his territory, but Haribert helped Pippin and Karloman defeat and imprison their half-brother and stepmother in December of that year.

At some point, Pippin did seek to end his marriage to Bertrada, but when and why is unclear. It probably had something to do with their not conceiving right away. This was an age when such a failure was a sign of God’s displeasure.

Two years after the nuptials, Pippin sent an emissary to Pope Zachary asking about illicit marriages. Perhaps he was wondering about consanguinity. He and Bertrada were relatives to the fourth degree (they shared a set of great-grandparents), rather than the preferred seventh. (Read more.)

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Bad Dreams in the Night

  

I am beginning to resent the fact that they are even using the name "Wuthering Heights" for Emerald Fennell's sexed-up clown show. Emily Brontë was a highly intelligent and dignified lady, a devout Christian, and whether or not a person likes her writing style they should show some respect. The costumes are deliberately inaccurate. The story begins in the 1780's but the costumes have no connection to the era. The chunky jewelry is of the sort which may have been worn in Imperial Russia but are out of place in a film about Yorkshire gentry. As for the casting, Margot is lovely but too old to play teenager "Catherine Earnshaw," the "Edgar Linton" character is too dark for Catherine's pallid husband. I do think Jacob Elordi is perfect for "Heathcliff." Yes, he is described as being "dark" like a gypsy but to the English at the time that could have meant someone with black hair from Wales or Ireland. Having an Asian actress for the part of Ellen Dean is odd since the whole point of Ellen is that she is a tough, no nonsense Yorkshire woman, the same age as the protagonists but reared to be a servant. Ellen as principle narrator has a decidedly unromantic view of the characters as expected of a person with such a background. Replacing her with an Asian adds an air of exoticism to the Earnshaw household, which was a place of dreary abuse and harsh fanaticism. And then there is the matter of Hindley. Nobody likes Hindley, except perhaps Mrs Hindley, and Ellen. And yet he is an important character in the novel, as Heathcliff's chief tormentor. But Ms. Fennell has completely excised Hindley from the film. I am appalled. From The Guardian:

This then is Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, or rather “Wuthering Heights”; the title archly appears in inverted commas, although the postmodern irony seems pointless. Cathy is a primped belle quivering in the presence of Heathcliff, who himself is a moody, long-haired, bearded outsider, as if Scarlett O’Hara were going to melt into the arms of Charles Manson. However, he does get substantially Darcyfied up later on, rocking a shorter and more winsome hairstyle, his gossamer-thin shirt never dry.

As a child, young Cathy Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington) is a pert miss, indulged by her roistering old twinkly eyed squire of a dad, in which role Martin Clunes pretty much pinches the whole film. Fennell incidentally abolishes the character of Cathy’s elder brother Hindley from the book (along with his wife and son) reassigning Hindley’s ruinous boozing and gambling to the father; Fennell also, in line with traditional WH adaptation, loses the next-gen second half of the novel, about the grownup children of Cathy, Hindley and Heathcliff. She also very feebly erases the issue of Heathcliff’s dark skin – and maybe those inverted commas are intended to shrug off issues of “authenticity”. (Read more.)

 

Apparently, the wall of a room is made to look like Cathy's skin. From Roger Ebert:

On paper, the stakes couldn’t be higher. But in Fennell’s hands, the all-consuming nature of the world feels softened, even flattened. Then again, maybe it is just crushed under the production design and costuming choices, often eye-popping in all the wrong ways. There is something too tidy and uninteresting about the great majority of Robbie’s garments during Cathy’s Thrushcross Grange years. The problem isn’t the contemporary liberties the costuming takes with the Georgian era of the story—period inaccuracy in aesthetics can be a wonderful creative asset in film—but the taste level.

There are some inspired pieces, like Cathy’s lush wedding gown, and a richly draped black frock that Linus Sandgren’s high-contrast lensing casts in white light. But for the most part, the costuming reminded this critic of the standard-issue Barbie doll gowns she used to collect in her dollhouse. (Peerless costume designer Jacqueline Durran dressed Robbie in “Barbie” too.) And Suzie Davies’ production design explores several interesting concepts, but many of them don’t blend into the story’s Gothic hues. Cathy’s pink Thrushcross Grange room feels almost comically bare, going against the visual excess we yearn for in these types of melodramas. And the wall dressings that are supposed to represent Cathy’s freckled skin are certainly an idea, but whether it’s a good one is debatable. Elsewhere, the location (shot actually in Yorkshire) and Sandgren’s cinematography of high contrasts, deep reds, and fog—lots of fog—feel cinematic enough. Though the whole thing feels like an artificial music video, rather than an inviting fantastical world we want to get lost in. Charli xcx’s admittedly beautiful (but ultimately distracting) songs and musical cues further this feeling. (Read more.)

 

From The New Yorker:

Like some other adaptations—including those directed by Wyler, Luis Buñuel, and Andrea Arnold—this one steers clear of the novel’s second half, in which the torments of Catherine and Heathcliff’s doomed romance rebound, cruelly, on their descendants. Fennell has also dropped the elaborate framing devices that make Brontë’s book, among other things, a feast of unreliable narration. Everything that happens in its pages is relayed to us by Mr. Lockwood, a nosy tenant at Thrushcross Grange, or Nelly Dean, the Earnshaws’ ever-watchful housekeeper. (Fennell dispenses with Lockwood entirely; Nelly is played, with formidably chilly side-eye, by Hong Chau, but her narrator function has been excised.) The impact, on the page, is of a ghostly melodramatic hearsay: Catherine and Heathcliff, for all their vividness, can seem more like spectres than characters. They flicker in the darkness like candlelight, incandescent yet ephemeral.

Fennell, it’s safe to say, has little interest in ephemera; she wants to emblazon her Catherine and Heathcliff on our brains. To that end, she and her collaborators, including the cinematographer Linus Sandgren and the production designer Suzie Davies, paint in the broadest of strokes. They unleash a full-blown stylistic assault roughly halfway through the film, around the time that Catherine becomes mistress of Thrushcross Grange. The hallways take on the gleaming aspect of a fashion runway, and in one room the floor is such a thick, gaudy shade of red that you half expect to find the elevator from “The Shining” around the corner. A dining table overflows with jellied extravagances; I’ve never seen a film with a greater aspic ratio. As for Catherine’s bedchamber, the walls almost qualify as body horror; they match her skin tone perfectly, right down to the blue-vein marbling. If Heathcliff won’t lick them, Hannibal Lecter surely would. (Read more.)

 

The novel has more violence than romance. From The Times:

Wuthering Heights is equally full of nasty surprises. In the first half alone, which describes in a series of flashbacks the arrival of a mysterious boy named Heathcliff at the isolated Wuthering Heights and his developing relationship with the family’s young daughter Catherine, we read about young Heathcliff being thrashed so often that his arm is “black to the shoulder”, Catherine pinching and slapping a servant, and the narrator responding to the appearance of a ghostly figure at his window by pulling its wrist on to a broken pane of glass and rubbing it back and forth “until the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes”. 

The second shock I experienced when reading the novel was its second half. The 1939 film had given the story of Catherine and Heathcliff a neat Hollywood ending. She dies, he follows soon afterwards, and in the last scene their ghosts are seen happily wandering off together across the snowy moor. The novel is far messier. Catherine dies shortly after marrying another man and giving birth to a daughter, and Heathcliff swears revenge on everyone who has wronged him: “I have no pity! The more worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails!” That occurs almost exactly halfway through the story.

What happens next is relentlessly grim: a further two decades of misery involving the children Heathcliff and Catherine have each produced with their respective partners. Once again, a doomed relationship threatens to destroy everyone who comes within its gravitational pull; once again, love and hate become as hard to distinguish as the two sides of a spinning coin. (Read more.)

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The Islamic Takeover of Europe

 From Overton:

That demographic shift, Finnerty argued, was enabled by political elites who showed more interest in reshaping their countries than protecting the people already living there. In his telling, it isn’t about immigration in the abstract — it’s about power, culture, and who Europe is being reorganized for. It’s a war on Western civilization itself.

FINNERTY: “As the people who lead these countries try to do what Joe Biden tried to do here, and that is fundamentally change the racial and ethnic makeup of a nation.”

“And make White Christians a minority in their own country.”

He pointed to England as an example of how fast that change has moved from theory to reality.

“In England alone, right now, ten major cities, including London, now have Muslim mayors.”

“In a nation that was built around the Church of England, Muslims are now running major cities across the country for the first time in history.”

“And the English want us to believe that this is all normal.”

“So this is not the Middle East. It’s not East Minneapolis even, that is England.”

“And when you see images like that, you can’t help but ask why anyone, a prime minister or a president or a king would deliberately try to destroy their own country.”

“Why would you do that? Why is this being done?”

“And because European leaders still celebrate our failed experiment in open borders, it failed here in the United States, and because they’ve chosen to stand with radical Muslims over their own people…”

“It’s because of all of these reasons, these countries are falling apart and failing.”

“As the attack on Western civilization continues.”

(Read more.)

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An Atheist’s Argument Against Abortion

 Even from a purely natural point of view, when science tells us that a fetus is a unique human being, abortion is barbaric. From Word on Fire:

Don Marquis was an atheist philosopher best known for his argument against abortion, which makes absolutely no appeal to religion, the soul, or God. So, how does Marquis reason to his conclusion?

He begins with common ground among those who are pro-choice and those who are pro-life. If someone kills you or me right now, that person would do something wrong. What makes it wrong to kill you or me?

If you or I are killed today, it doesn’t take away the good things we enjoyed yesterday: the friendships we shared, the knowledge we learned, and the beauty we enjoyed. But if you or I are killed today, we are deprived of the friendships we could have enjoyed, the knowledge we could have gained, and the beauty we could have experienced in the future. So, killing you or me is wrong because it deprives us of the chance to enjoy goods in the future. Put another way, one reason killing is wrong is because it deprives an individual of a future-like-ours. 

So too, if a newborn baby is killed, he is deprived of the friendships he would have formed, the knowledge he would have learned, the beauty he would have experienced. He won’t joke with friends, he won’t master penalty kicks in soccer, and he won’t become a dad. Infanticide is wrong because it deprives an individual of his chance for a valuable future. 

But the same thing is true of the human being deprived of life prior to birth. She won’t graduate from kindergarten, she won’t have her first kiss, and she won’t be able to learn jiu jitsu. Abortion is wrong because it deprives an individual of her chance for a future-like-ours.

One objection raised to Marquis’s argument is that his argument shows not only that infanticide and abortion are wrong but also that contraception is wrong. This conclusion may not trouble those who think contraception is wrong, but it would trouble people in favor of contraception. So, if you think contraception is sometimes permissible, then you should also reject Marquis’s future-like-ours argument. (Read more.)

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