History of 'The Friars'

Where the Carmelite Order began in England. From The Friars website:

Nestled by the tree-lined River Medway near Aylesford is the principal house of the Carmelite religious order that came to Kent in 1242. A compelling story of the Friars and the Carmelites of Aylesford who were forced from their priory in 1538 only to return 400 years later in 1949, is told in the artworks and buildings discovered on a short walk through the grounds. Here you’ll come across one of the finest intact medieval courtyards in England, 17th-century thatched barns and a hostelry for pilgrims dating to the late 1200s. 

In its 750-year history, this venerable oasis has changed use many times. In the centuries after the Reformation, the monastic was converted into an opulent stately home. Merchant bankers, Royalists during the Civil War, Second World War servicemen and even the leader of a Scout group have all left their mark.

When the Carmelite family returned in the mid-20th century, they restored the tranquil gardens, built chapels and adorned them with distinguished ceramic artworks. Father Malachy Lynch who spearheaded the reconstruction, memorably described the Friars as a “prayer in stone”. (Read more.)

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Gottfried is Right: Wokeness Is Not Communism, It’s Demonic Narcissism

 From Mark Judge at Chronicles:

Gottfried, a former professor of humanities at Elizabethtown College, has authored many outstanding books—particularly on the question of Marxism—so I defer to his judgment on what qualifies and doesn’t qualify for the precise definition of Marxism and Communism. Rather than disagree with him, I’d like to offer a slightly different perspective. The woke, in fact, are clinical narcissists in the sense that term was defined by Christopher Lasch. 

Narcissism, Lasch argued in his 1979 classic The Culture of Narcissism, is not self-love, but the opposite. The narcissist is not full of ego but has no sense of self. Lacking a stable sense of identity, the narcissist hunts for meaning in therapy, self-help, sex, or radical politics. This is the mental illness that is driving the politics of the left.

Lasch argued that human personality and psychology have changed over the course of the last century. Americans have transformed from strong, confident and well-adjusted people to those evincing a “minimal” self. Having cast aside our former understanding of man’s purpose and meaning in this world, American personality has become weak and dependent on government, corporations, radical politics, sex, and bureaucracies for a sense of meaning. 

Central to Lasch’s analysis is an understanding how infants develop. Citing Freud, he argued that to an infant, interactions with the world result in two sets of feelings—either omnipotence or helplessness. In an infant’s fantasy world, that baby is either the king of the world, demanding that his needs get met right now, or he is totally helpless and dependent on others for survival.

To snap out of this infants must encounter limits or “transitional objects” as they grow. Toys, games, siblings, sports, and barriers introduce limits into the world of the child. These objects shrink the scale of fantasies, introduce reality, and allow a healthy transition into adulthood. In the latter part of the 20^th century, too much of the raising of children went to television, the helping professions, schools, and bureaucracies. (Read more.)

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The Silk Road and Myths of Dragons

 From The Collector:

The Silk Road is one of the world’s most famous trade routes, connecting distant eastern civilizations with Eurasia. It stretched from China through Central Asia and Persia to the Mediterranean. But it was much more than just a trade route. While silk, spices, and jewels were transported, so were customs, myths, religions, and legends. One important myth that traveled along the Silk Road was about dragons. This is how Chinese ideas about dragons influenced European dragon lore, along the Silk Road.

The Silk Road was not a single road that led from China to Europe. It was a network of interconnected trade routes that meandered between the two continents until a standard route was established. The people who used this network did not call it the Silk Road, a term that was coined in the 19th century by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen. Historians believe that the beginnings of the Silk Road can be traced back to the 2nd century BC during China’s Han dynasty, when the diplomat Zhang Qian was sent to establish alliances with western lands and bring his knowledge and observations back to China. During his journey, he saw great trading potential for China, which primarily exported silk.

The Silk Road stretched for thousands and thousands of kilometers, beginning in northern China and passing through important oasis cities such as Dunhuang and Kashgar before reaching the desert regions and mountains of Central Asia. From there, caravans would travel west to Samarkand and Bukhara, continue into Persia, and eventually reach the Mediterranean through cities such as Antioch. Along this route, one of the biggest challenges was navigating complicated terrains such as the Taklamakan Desert and the Pamir Mountains. If there were signposts at all, there were not many of them. Along the way, merchants often founded smaller trading towns and colonies that served travelers.

The Silk Road was most commonly used for transporting Chinese silk, Central Asian horses, spices from South Asia, and precious metals, glass, and ceramics. However, the Silk Road was not used only by merchants but also by pilgrims, diplomats, poets, artists, and adventurers. It was often these travelers who transported ideas, including myths about dragons. (Read more.)

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The 9 Most Beautiful Historical Movie Theaters in the US

 

From Architectural Digest:

“Theaters help bring people together to learn and laugh and just be in community,” says Benita VanWinkle, a photographer and associate professor of visual arts at High Point University in High Point, North Carolina. Theaters are also treasure troves of architectural brilliance, as evidenced in VanWinkle’s soon-to-be-released book America’s Hometown Movie Theaters: Please Remain Standing (Bauer & Dean Publishers, September 2026). The book features 395 theaters, all built before 1965, that VanWinkle has photographed while traveling the country for more than 40 years. In the process, VanWinkle also captured tales of resilience as communities have come together over the decades to preserve historical theaters. Her hope is that they remain, not just for design lovers, but as essential community gathering places. “Theaters have always been these places where we get to see a different version of ourselves and have a place together that doesn’t have judgment,” she says. “Most theaters have places to have discussions, share conversations, be educated, and be entertained.”

Here, we’ve pulled our nine favorite historical movie theaters featured in the book. The date listed alongside each theater name and location is the year it was photographed by VanWinkle. Looking for even more movie house magic? There are literally hundreds more movie retro theaters and drive-ins to be admired in her book. (Read more.)

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Spying and Lying

 From Sharyl's Substack:

The news that Special Counsel Jack Smith spied on Congress and then lied about it should be of no surprise.

It’s far from the first time something like that has happened.

And since nobody has been held accountable in the past in any meaningful way, why would anybody expect the behavior to stop? Why wouldn’t the abuses expand?

The same could be said after the forensically proven government spying on me and my family. I was an investigative correspondent at CBS News at the time. The Department of Justice has defended the improper spying against me, in court. under Obama, Trump, and Biden—rather than holding the guilty parties accountable.

Let’s look at an early scandal that left the guilty officials unscathed and foreshadowed more to come.

In March 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper gave false information under oath before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked him directly: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Clapper replied: “No, sir… Not wittingly.”

This was untrue. We didn’t know it at the time but the National Security Agency (NSA) was secretly collecting massive amounts of telephone metadata, records of who called whom, when, and for how long, on tens of millions of Americans through the Section 215 program, along with other bulk surveillance programs. (Read more.)

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‘The Odyssey’: The Blueprint of a Civilization

 From Ekathimerini:

We tend to file “The Odyssey” under “mythology” – alongside stories of gods who never existed, sung by people trying to explain thunder. That filing is a mistake, and it obscures the single most consequential literary achievement in human history.

“The Odyssey” is not a myth. It is a founding document. It is the moment human beings first discovered that they had an inside – and it is the blueprint from which an entire civilization, and everything that civilization would eventually give the world, was built.

Read “The Iliad” closely and something strange emerges. Achilles does not decide to rage – rage arrives and moves through him like wind fills a sail. When a god speaks, the hero does not experience it as an outside voice interrupting his thoughts; the god’s command is his thought. Heroes act. They do not deliberate. There is no interior room where a self sits and weighs its options – there is only impulse, arriving as if from outside, and action following immediately after.

The Odyssey breaks this pattern, and the break is the whole point.

Odysseus pauses. He calculates. He lies, plots, improvises, disguises himself, and – for the first time in surviving literature – he talks to himself. Clinging to a rock through a violent night, he says: “Endure, my heart. You have endured worse than this.” That is not a god speaking through him. That is one part of a man addressing another part of the same man. It is the first recorded act of a human being holding itself together through interior dialogue.

Homer did not just tell a story about a man finding his way home. He recorded – perhaps without fully realizing it – the birth of human self-awareness. (Read more.)

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My Guest Post for Tony Riches

 My thanks to Tony for such a wonderful opportunity! From The Writing Desk:

Wife of the ill-fated Charles I, the colony named for her was intended to be a refuge for Roman Catholics, the Catholic religion being forbidden in the Three Kingdoms. In my room as a teenager there was a print of the Van Dyck portrait of Henrietta Maria, the original of which is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Called “Mary” by her subjects, the second Stuart queen of England peers down from the portrait with her black eyes, which contemporaries described as large, sparkling and beautiful. Her dark curls with auburn highlights contrast against the deep marine blue shimmer of a silk dress, with the salmon-pink bows and elaborate white cuffs and high starched collar. A wide-brimmed plumed black hat was of the type made famous by the cavaliers who later fought for her husband in the English Civil Wars. 

The white plumes are reminiscent of the one made famous by her father Henri IV of France, which he wore into battle so that his men could always find him. Like her father, Henrietta Maria was not afraid to stand out, remaining a devoted Catholic in a land where her faith was banned, becoming the number one lawbreaker, while also striving to be a traditionally obedient wife, as was expected. But the expectations placed upon her made her life a tightrope walk which almost broke her.

The life of Henrietta Maria of France (1609-1669) was turbulent from the beginning. Half-Bourbon and half-Medici, her father, the famous Henri IV, was assassinated when she was an infant. Brought up by her mother, the Queen Regent Marie de’ Medici, to be a devout Catholic, she also mastered ballet, singing, and acting, skills which she would use in masques to entertain the Bourbon Court and later the Stuart Court. At fifteen she was sent to marry Charles Stuart, grandson of Mary Queen of Scots, who had just succeeded his father James I to the throne of the Three Kingdoms. 

While Charles I never converted to Catholicism, as had been hoped by many, his relationship with his wife was profoundly spiritual, enhancing the intense physical passion between them. After the initial clashing of cultures and personalities, theirs became one of the most devoted in the history of royal marriages, and was blessed with nine children. During the troubles which led to the English Civil War, Henrietta Maria became a liability to Charles because of her religion and her meddling, both perceived and actual. But her courage and her devotion fuelled the royalist cause, as she sold her jewels to raise money for arms and led soldiers to aid her husband. 

The challenges the royal couple faced in their early years of marriage are told in Book 1 of the Henrietta of France trilogy, My Queen, My Love. Book 2 will deal with the Civil Wars and Book 3 will be about the Queen’s widowhood as well as the adventures of her surviving children.

My view of historical fiction is that the author attempts to paint a portrait of the past with words. A historical novel is like a portrait come to life, allowing the reader to step into the past. Authenticity is vital, and that comes only from thorough research. While it is not always possible to visit the historical places that play a part in the novel, it helps. 

The internet has been a gift to historical fiction writers, making accessible old documents, manuscripts, pictures and books that one once had to travel far to find. I found the original program of the 1623 masque performed by Anne of Austria and Henrietta of France at the Louvre during Shrovetide. It was at the rehearsal of the masque that Charles Stuart first saw Henrietta during his incognito visit to Paris. Such primary sources, like the Queen’s letters, are indispensable for creating a living portrait.

So much of what people think they know about Henrietta Maria has been filtered secondhand through multiple writers, some of whom view her as a frothy but tiresome fanatic who led her husband into ruin. This is often accompanied by the perception of the Queen as a dangerous seductress, who used her French wiles in the boudoir to subject Charles to her will. 

And others decide that Charles was not enough for her but she had lovers such as Henry Jermyn who actually told her what to do, while fathering her children. Just as her enemies called her the “popish brat of France,” she has been portrayed erroneously either as a sex fiend soaked with crazed religiosity, or as a shy, pious pawn. (Read more.)

Novel available HERE.

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Ghouls

 From Unlicensed Punditry:

Lindsey Graham’s sudden death caused the ghoulish cretins on the left to slither out of their dens once again. I’ve come to expect any death of a conservative or a Republican to result in grotesque hatred spewing from the left – and yes, without fear of contradiction, I can state that most of this behavior does come from the left. It has become who they are.

When I look at things that some find disagreeable today that were once entirely unremarkable, I find myself wondering where the line is between principled disagreement and conditioned reflex. At what point does opposition cease to be the product of reason and become little more than an autonomic response? When does “I disagree because I think you’re wrong” quietly become “I disagree because you’re the one saying it”?

That is not a trivial distinction. It is the difference between a healthy society/republic and dysfunctional ones.

Once people drift into the mindset of “I’m against it because you’re for it” or “I’m for it because you’re against it,” the possibility of persuasion begins to disappear. Facts become secondary. Evidence becomes negotiable. The merits of the policy no longer matter because the policy itself has become little more than a tribal flag. Supporting or opposing it is no longer an exercise in judgment; it is a declaration of identity. (Read more.)

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Limited-purpose Libel

 From Mark Judge at The New Criterion:

To understand the negative effects of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the 1964 Supreme Court case that changed American libel laws, consider the example of David Enrich. An investigative reporter for The New York Times who participated in the paper’s smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, Enrich is the author of Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful (2025), a book that defends the press and, specifically, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Though Enrich has expressed regret for his own sloppy and malevolent reporting, it is protected by the very legal victories he celebrates in his own book.

The events of the case began in 1960 when The New York Times published a political advertisement critical of Southern opposition to desegregation that condemned the Montgomery police force but also contained inaccuracies. This led L. B. Sullivan, the Montgomery police commissioner, to sue the Times for libel. Sullivan prevailed in the trial court and won the appeal in the Supreme Court of Alabama. The Times then appealed to the Supreme Court. In an opinion authored by Justice William Brennan, the Court reversed the lower-court decisions: to be guilty of libel, a media outlet had to be guilty of “actual malice.”

Insight into the case is provided by Carson Holloway, a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska, in his new book No Liberty to Libel: The Constitutional Case Against New York Times v. Sullivan, published by Encounter Books. (Editor’s note: The New Criterion and Encounter Books are both published by Roger Kimball.) As Holloway describes it, 

“Actual malice” here carried a specific, technical meaning—that the allegedly defamatory claims had been published with knowledge of their falsity, or at least with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity. To win damages in a libel action, the Court held, plaintiffs who were public officials would have to show not only that they had been defamed by a false publication, but also that the falsehood had been published knowingly or recklessly. This new standard gave the press (and others) what the Court believed was the constitutionally required breathing room to discuss vital public issues without undue fear of incurring large damage awards for erroneous publications—with the admitted side effect that some public officials who had actually suffered reputational damage from false reports would be unable to secure legal redress for their injuries.

In the years after Sullivan, Holloway notes, “additional rulings proceeded further down the trail blazed by the Sullivan Court, extending the ‘actual malice’ requirement to cases involving not only public officials but also ‘public figures.’” In 1967, the Supreme Court found in both Curtis Publishing Company v. Butts and Associated Press v. Walker that the actual-malice rule should apply not only to libel cases brought by public officials but also to those brought by all public figures—entertainers, professional athletes, musicians, business leaders, or university presidents. “Many who do not hold public office at the moment are nevertheless intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions,” Chief Justice Warren wrote in his decision on Curtis Publishing Company v. Butts. He continued, “our citizenry has a legitimate and substantial interest in the conduct of such persons, and freedom of the press to engage in uninhibited debate about their involvement in public issues and events is as crucial as it is in the case of ‘public officials.’” (Read more.)

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The Tragic Life of Marie-Thérèse of France

From Salon Privé Magazine:

As Marie-Thérèse Charlotte of France grew older, the French Revolution threatened. Because the country supported the American Revolution, funds were very low and France was borderline bankrupt. Attacks on the royal family became more vicious and the monarchy’s popularity plummeted. Within the Court of Versailles, xenophobia and jealousy were the primary causes of resentment towards Marie Antoinette, and due to her unpopularity with high-ranking officials within the court, she became the target of a vicious smear campaign. Pamphlets and leaflets were printed accusing her of a wide range of sexual deviancies and of sending France into financial ruin. Now, experts agree that Marie Antoinette was unfairly victimised and did little to deserve such treatment. At the time, however, this smear campaign worked and the public turned on her. (Read more.)

Madame Royale is one of the only novels about the life of Marie-Thérèse Charlotte.


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President Trump Reveals America's Voting Systems Completely Corrupt

 From L. Todd Wood at CDM:

In a primetime speech from the East Room of the White House on Thursday evening, President Donald Trump issued stark warnings about the integrity of U.S. elections, declaring that "all machines are dishonest and vulnerable" and outlining what he described as systemic corruption threatening American democracy.

The address, focused on election security ahead of the November midterms, featured the president referencing newly declassified intelligence reports now available on WhiteHouse.gov. Trump stated these documents confirm extensive vulnerabilities in the nation's voting infrastructure.

"All machines are dishonest and vulnerable," Trump told the national audience. He argued that voting systems across the country have been compromised, exposing them to manipulation and undermining public trust in electoral outcomes.

The president pointed to voter registrations as corrupt nationwide, claiming inflated and inaccurate rolls have enabled ineligible voting. He similarly described mail-in ballots as "vulnerable and corrupt," citing risks of fraud, improper handling, and lack of verification as major concerns that demand immediate reform.

Trump directly accused actors inside the U.S. government and media of participating in a coverup, alleging elements of the so-called "deep state" downplayed or suppressed evidence of these issues during his first term and the 2020 election cycle. He vowed that "urgent action will be taken" to address these threats, including enhanced federal oversight and support for legislative measures like the SAVE America Act. (Read more.)

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Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ Is About Duty, Loyalty, and Family

 From Victor Davis Hanson at The Daily Signal:

Christopher Nolan, the renowned British director, has a new film coming out, another remake of “The Odyssey” by Homer. It’s supposed to come out July 17.  

Everybody’s been talking about it, not because they know what’s in it or they’re trying to guess how he treats this age-old epic, but because one of the stars, Lupita Nyong’o, and forgive me if I mispronounced her name, has been very vocal that, as she views the script and Homer’s work himself, there’s a matter of feminism that Homer did not highlight women sufficiently. 

Homer wrote “The Odyssey,” remember, around 700 to 650 BC at the dawn of the Greek city-state. It’s the second of his two epics, "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey", and it’s a much different epic than "The Iliad", which takes place in about 11 weeks on the plain of Troy.  

This is a panoramic view of the Mediterranean and traces the 20-year odyssey of the hero Odysseus to get back from Troy to the northeastern island off the coast of Greece, Ithaca. 

What she said was that there was not a sufficient portrayal of women or they were not powerful enough. I couldn’t understand that. I taught “The Odyssey” for 20 years in English at the California State University system to a variety of students, probably 2,000 students in humanities courses, as well as a much smaller number in Greek. 

And one thing one comes away with is that there’s no literature anywhere in the world at that time that has been more deferential or more interested in women. (Read more.)

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Death of a Family

 

July 17 is a sad anniversary. To quote author and historian Gareth Russell:

It had been a horrible, violent, lawless death - carried out in secret, without a trial or without justice. It was a fate that was to befall millions of ordinary Russians in the years under Communist rule - a system of government which has still, inexplicably, managed to escape the historical condemnation it so richly deserves. The Soviet Union was a depraved and genocidal regime, which even on its best days bore all the qualities of a sociopath. It was devoid of morality or respect for human life. It was infinitely worse than any regime in Russian history. And although it had technically come to power in October 1917, it was the events in Yekaterinburg on 17th July 1918 that should arguably be seen as the Soviet Union's true birth-date. Everything that defined it and everything that it was prepared to resort to was contained in how it executed the Romanovs. As Trotsky so rightly pointed out, with his chilling disinterest in human suffering - it proved that there was no going back. It defined what was to come. (Read entire post.)

 

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Why We’re Dismantling the ICC

 From U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

Most of us would struggle to imagine a world in which U.S. soldiers, police officers, Border Patrol agents and elected leaders could be dragged before an international court, tried by judges from random countries across the globe, found guilty under international laws we neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America.

But that is what the International Criminal Court now claims the power to do.

The ICC was born at the turn of the century. At first, it was marketed as a narrow backstop to prosecute the gravest crimes. Now the ICC and its allies seek a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states—and to prosecute and arrest our citizens. (Read more.)

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Rare Royal Crowns

 From Archaeology News:

The exhibition, titled “Hidden Within,” is now open at the Vilnius Church Heritage Museum. Visitors see burial regalia placed with King Alexander Jagiellon, Queen Elizabeth of Austria, and Queen Barbara Radziwill during the 16th century. The collection includes three funeral crowns, a scepter, an orb, jewelry, and personal items once buried with the rulers. Many experts believed these objects had disappeared forever.

The story began in 1931, when spring floods exposed royal crypts beneath Vilnius Cathedral. Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the three rulers along with their burial insignia. As World War II approached, church officials hid the collection to protect it from looting and damage. Part of the cathedral treasury returned to light in 1985, though the royal burial objects stayed missing for decades. (Read more.)

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Marie-Antoinette and the Carmelite Order

Madame Louise of France

Marie-Antoinette as Dauphine

The connection between the Carmelite Order and the Royal House of France originated in the Middle Ages, when St. Louis IX encountered the hermits on Mt. Carmel and brought them to France. When the Discalced Reform came to France from Spain in the early seventeenth century, the royal family assisted the nuns with their patronage. The French court was shaken in 1674 when Louise de la Vallière, the former mistress of Louis XIV, publicly begged the queen's forgiveness and entered a Carmelite monastery. In his book To Quell the Terror, William Bush details the many connections of the later Bourbons with Carmel, particularly the patronage of Queen Marie Lesczynska and her daughter Madame Louise. When Louise herself chose to become a Carmelite nun in 1770, it cemented the spiritual ties between those in the worldliness of Versailles and those in the austerity of the cloister.

Marie-Antoinette of Austria married the Dauphin in the same year that Madame Louise entered the monastery. The young princess offered to represent Louis XV at the ceremony at which his daughter Louise received the habit of Carmel, since it was too painful for the king and the rest of his family to be present. So it was the teenage Marie-Antoinette who veiled the new "Soeur Thérèse de Saint-Augustin."

In the years the followed, Marie-Antoinette would visit her husband's aunt three times year at the Carmel, of which she was a benefactress. As the Queen's maid Madame Campan relates in her Memoirs:

The Court went to visit her about three times a year, and I recollect that the Queen, intending to take her daughter there, ordered me to get a doll dressed like a Carmelite for her, that the young Princess might be accustomed, before she went into the convent, to the habit of her aunt, the nun.

According to Madame Campan, Madame Louise as a nun was deeply involved in church affairs; she was always petitioning her nephew's wife, so that Marie-Antoinette called her: "the most intriguing little Carmelite in the kingdom." It was at the request of Madame Louise, however, that Marie-Antoinette granted a dowry to a poor, pious girl named Mademoiselle Lidoine, so that she could enter the Carmel of Compiègne. Mademoiselle Lidoine became the Mother Prioress of the heroic Martyrs of Compiègne, who like Marie-Antoinette, died on the guillotine during the French Revolution.

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America’s Food Shift Under RFK Jr.

 From Sharyl's Substack:

Recent polls show a clear shift toward healthier eating habits among Americans.

According to one 2025 survey, more people (57%) followed a specific diet or eating pattern in the past year — up from just 36% in 2018 — with high-protein diets leading the way at 23% (up from 4% in 2018).

Americans are actively trying to eat more protein (70%) and fiber, while defining “healthy food” by traits like “fresh,” “low in sugar,” “minimal processing,” and “limited artificial ingredients.”

They’re also rating their own diets healthier than in 2020 and seeking benefits like more energy.

While dramatic overnight bans haven’t materialized, noticeable changes are appearing on store shelves, in school cafeterias, and even at some restaurants—mostly through voluntary industry moves rather than strict mandates. (Read more.)

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Armenia Was the Most Important Buffer State Between Rome and Persia

 From The Collector:

The Roman Empire fought for centuries with powerful Persian dynasties in the east, which prevented it from establishing a fixed eastern frontier. The Parthian Empire and then the Sasanian Empire were among Rome’s greatest and most powerful rivals, and their conflicts often took place in the lands between their territories. One of those lands was Armenia, a kingdom situated between Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus. Control of Armenia provided a key defensive barrier and control of important trade routes. The Kingdom of Armenia became one of the most important buffer states between the two mighty empires.

Armenia is located in what has always been a geographically sensitive region. In ancient times, it was located between the eastern Roman provinces and the western territories of the Parthian and, later, the Sasanian Empire. Armenia forms a natural bridge between Anatolia, the Iranian plateau, and Mesopotamia. It is also close to an important transregional route connecting the Black Sea basin to the Near East.

The territory of Armenia is defined by rugged highlands, making the Armenian plateau rich in mountains and deep valleys, with limited passes. These passages were crucial because they directed armies and traders along predictable routes. These vast mountain ranges gave Armenia a great advantage because it was almost unconquerable. Consequently, the major powers like Rome and Persia, instead of conquering, often sought to secure the allegiance and loyalty of the Armenian crown. (Read more.)

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Augustinian Traces in Louis XVI

 

There is some amazing new scholarship about Louis XVI. Here is a paper about Louis XVI's spirituality as formed by his education, which influenced his future actions. From Dr. Philip Diaz-Lewis via the History of European Ideas:

This article argues that Louis XVI’s student notes, the Réflexions sur mes Entretiens avec M. le duc de la Vauguyon reveal a coherent Augustinian Platonist ethics derived from Fénelon, in which humanité functions as a divine exemplar idea through which moral principles are known and royal virtues specified. Against existing interpretations that oppose Louis’s reformism to his attachment to sacral monarchy, it proposes that the same philosophical framework can be used to interpret both his constitutional initiatives and his maintenance of traditional court ritual. The argument proceeds by reconstructing the Dauphin’s formation under La Vauguyon, Moreau, and Berthier, then by a close reading of key Réflexions passages on God, natural law and humanité, interpreted with the aid of the Dictionnaire de Trévoux lexicon. (Read more.)

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The US Should Exit the UN

 From Brownstone Insights:

The UN is often viewed as an ineffectual bureaucracy that occasionally does some good. It is nothing so benevolent. Its origins may have been well-meaning, but the current UN has become what it claims to oppose. The US should leave the UN altogether and immediately, especially since its unjust policies are likely to get worse…and soon.

The UN’s Original Mission

The UN Charter (1945) opens,

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED…to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women…

The Preamble of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states,

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Article 2 of the Declaration provides,

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex…

‘All human beings are equal’ is the basis of Western justice, whether the equality is under nature, God, or law. Instead of pursuing equality, however, the UN is now a woke and corrupt actor that creates inequality and division. The UN’s financial malfeasance, the sexual abuse by field personnel, its demonization of the West…are well documented in the 104-page report From Watchdogs to Ideologues: How Politicized UN Rapporteurs Are Subverting Human Rights by the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch.

The UN’s demonstrated commitment is to social justice or a wokeness rooted in equity, not equality. Equity seeks the redistribution of wealth and power to those who are considered oppressed from those who are considered oppressors. Equity is the opposite of equality under the law. (Read more.)

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Does King Priam of Troy Appear in Hittite Records?

 From The Greek Reporter:

King Priam was the famous king of Troy during the Trojan War. It was his son, Paris Alexander, who took Helen back to Troy and inadvertently caused the enormous war with the Greeks. Priam himself was allegedly a powerful monarch. He was married to a princess from the nearby kingdom of Phrygia, which itself was a very wealthy and powerful kingdom.

The father of Priam was Laomedon, the king who had fortified the city of Troy. He was the last king in a dynasty going all the way back to Dardanus, some five generations prior to him. While many of the kings in this line had Greek names, scholars generally interpret Priam’s name to be Luwian. This was an Anatolian language common in the Bronze Age.

Traditionally, scholars believe Priam first appears in Homer’s Iliad. However, some researchers claim he appears in records, such as those of the Hittites, long before this.

What are the records in question? They are Hittite documents dating to the 13th century BCE, particularly the middle and late part of that century. These documents reveal that a certain war leader named Piyama-Radu was active in Western Anatolia in that era. (Read more.)

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Bastille Day and the French Revolution Were Not Caused by Marie-Antoinette

From The New American:

July 14 marks another anniversary of Bastille Day, the day the Paris mob rioted and stormed the Bastille, a prison fortress in the city. The popular image of the incident is that of the French Revolution itself, which is that the liberty-loving French folk in Paris spontaneously rose up against a tyrannical king and his arrogant wife, and heroically stormed the symbol of the Old Regime — liberating hundreds of political prisoners. This led to an abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a government dedicated to liberty for all the people of France.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Almost everyone has heard that Queen Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake,” in haughty response to the plea of the poor starving masses of France: “We have no bread.”

That is also untrue.

And it is widely believed that Antoinette caused or at least was the principal cause — of the entire French Revolution.

That is ridiculous.

Whereas Louis XVI and his wife, Marie, are usually pictured in the history books and in the popular culture as tyrants of the worst sort, the truth is quite different. The real Marie Antoinette was a charitable woman, who lodged and fed 12 poor families, at her own expense, at Trianon. She founded the Society of Ladies of Maternal Charity. She even once stopped her carriage for over an hour to aid an injured person, waiting until a surgeon was located.

Historian Antonia Fraser disputed the cruel libel in her book Marie Antoinette, the Journey. “As a handy journalistic cliché, [“Let them eat cake”] it may never die,” Fraser wrote, adding “such ignorant behavior would have been quite out of character. The unfashionably philanthropic Marie Antoinette would have been far more likely to bestow her own cake impulsively upon the starving people before her.”

If the Revolution was not caused by Marie Antoinette, then just who did cause it? (Read more.)

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Climate Policy as National Suicide

 From The Enterprise:

There is a simple test for whether a nation’s climate policy is serious. Ask what it does for the citizen standing in a 104°F apartment. Britain fails this test, and it fails it in a way that should terrify anyone watching Sacramento or Albany, because the failure is not an accident of implementation. It is baked into the theory. Britain has organized its entire climate regime around a single false premise, the premise that a country can purchase safety from a warming world by making itself poorer. The results are now in, and they constitute the most instructive policy experiment of the century.

Begin with the arithmetic, because everything else follows from it. In 2024 the world emitted 53.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases. Britain emitted 386.7 million tonnes, which is 0.73% of the total. China emitted roughly 40 Britains. The US emitted about 15. India emitted 11. And here is the number that should end every debate about unilateral sacrifice: global emissions grew by roughly 665 million tonnes in that single year, which means the world added approximately 1.7 Britains of new emissions in 12 months. If Britain had vanished from the map on January 1, 2024, ceased all economic activity, extinguished every light and grounded every aircraft, the global emissions ledger would have recovered the difference in about 7 months. This is not an argument for nihilism. It is an argument for strategic clarity. Britain cannot control the hazard. It can only control its vulnerability to the hazard. A rational government would therefore ask one question above all others: what reduces the vulnerability of the British people? The answer is adaptation, and adaptation has a price tag. The Climate Change Committee, Britain’s own official climate watchdog, estimates that the country needs approximately £11 billion annually in adaptation investment, covering flood defenses, water storage, hospital retrofits, and cooling. Note what that number implies. Adaptation is not a moral posture. It is a capital expenditure, and capital expenditures require capital, which requires a productive economy, which requires cheap and reliable energy.

Now observe what Britain actually did. The Office for National Statistics reports that output in Britain’s energy-intensive industries has fallen by roughly one-third since 2021. Non-domestic electricity prices nearly doubled between early 2021 and late 2023. By 2023, British industrial electricity prices were the highest among all 24 countries reporting to the International Energy Agency, nearly 50% above French and German levels and approximately 4 times American and Canadian levels. Think about what that sentence means. The country that needs £11 billion a year to protect itself from heat and flooding has engineered the most expensive industrial electricity in the developed world, driving out the very industries whose tax revenue and productive capacity would fund the protection. Britain is not trading prosperity for safety. It is liquidating the capital account that safety would have been drawn against. (Read more.)

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The Shot Heard ‘Round the World

 From Gettysburg Connection:

By the mid-1700s, the ideas of the Enlightenment – social contract, natural rights, freedom of speech, religious toleration – had been in circulation for nearly 100 years. But the Declaration of Independence was the first time these thoughts had been translated into action. Within a few months of its adoption by the Continental Congress, the Declaration had spread throughout Europe. In Spanish-America, publication and circulation of the Declaration and other revolutionary documents was banned, but it was still translated into Spanish and continued to spread.

Veterans of the Revolution also spread the word. Tadeusz Kosciusko is a national hero in Poland for his efforts to promote human liberties and the end of feudal practices in that country. With the help of America’s ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which was eventually approved by the French National Assembly and King Louis XVI. The two “Declarations” were read throughout the world and inspired independence movements. (Read more.)

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Chesterton on St. Joan

 

From Rae at Educating Souls:

Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We know that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild speculators who do nothing. — G.K. Chesterton

(Illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith)

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The 400,000 USAID Deaths

 From DataRepublican:

South Sudan’s independence was the product of a twenty-year American political project that united four constituencies who agreed on nothing else. Evangelicals found Christians enslaved by an Islamist government; Francis Bok, captured at age seven, became the first formerly enslaved person to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Congressional Black Caucus found Arab militias enslaving Black Africans; the apartheid divestment playbook was redeployed against Talisman Energy, the last major Western oil company in Sudan. Neoconservatives found a state sponsor of terrorism that had hosted bin Laden. Liberal interventionists found a genocide in Darfur; the Save Darfur rally on the National Mall in 2006 drew tens of thousands of people.

The Darfur Peace and Accountability Act passed the House 416 to 3. All four constituencies arrived at the same policy: pressure Khartoum, support the south, self-determination. The Save Darfur Coalition merged in 2011 — referendum year — into “United to End Genocide”. The momentum from one crisis was redirected to engineer the independence of a different part of the country.

Meanwhile, Operation Lifeline Sudan had been running since 1989 — sixteen years of airstrips, supply chains, and NGO networks that USAID inherited. OLS was the first time the UN negotiated directly with a non-state armed group, implicitly legitimizing the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) as a governing authority before it governed anything. (Read more.)

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Did Medieval Women Have Power?

 From History...the Interesting Bits:

Another way women could exert power and influence was in the arena of war. Aethelflaed, daughter of King Alfred the Great, ruled the kingdom of Mercia throughout her husband’s illness and then as a ruler in her own right after he died in 911. Alongside her brother, Edward the Elder, Aethelflaed halted the attacks of the Vikings and even reclaimed much territory lost to them in the previous generations. Aethelflaed can be found directly participating in warfare, fulfilling the role of a commander.

Later examples of the involvement of women in warfare can be found on the Continent. Matilda of Tuscany raised and led armies in her struggle to secure her inheritance. The mighty Holy Roman Emperor proved no match for Matilda, and he was forced to relinquish his claims to Matilda’s Italian domains in the late eleventh century. Sikelgaita, the wife of the Southern Italian Norman ruler, Robert Guiscard, earned a reputation equally formidable as that of her husband. No mere passive consort to a powerful Norman baron, Sikelgaita lent authority to her husband’s power in the region through her lineage. Guiscard trusted Sikelgaita as a military commander and is perhaps best remembered for her orders to the fleeing soldiers of her husband’s army, whereby she challenged them to fight and ‘be men’. Born in the early fifteenth century, Joan of Arc is one of the most famous examples of a medieval woman participating in warfare. From humble origins, Joan followed what she believed to be spiritual voices, which led her all the way to the French court. Joan proved to be a valuable asset to the French Dauphin, achieving a series of military victories over the English and even securing his coronation before finding herself discarded by the monarch once her usefulness had run its course. Some women found power and even fame through their military activities and accomplishments, with women such as Joan of Arc continuing to intrigue modern audiences. (Read more.)

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The Power of Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites”

The nuns were martyred on July 17, 1794. From The Voegelin View:

The 1957 opera is based on the true story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, a community of sixteen Carmelite nuns who were guillotined during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. The libretto is the work of Georges Bernanos, the French Catholic author best known for his novel The Diary of a Country Priest.

Dialogues balances the sweep of historical events with the inner spiritual journey of Blanche de la Force, a young woman from an aristocratic family who fears the oncoming Revolution. Blanche’s fear impels her to join the Carmelite order, but in doing so she goes straight into the target of the revolutionary mob. Arrested and cast out of their convent, the nuns take a vow of martyrdom rather than renounce their vocation. Blanche initially panics and runs away, but at the last moment she finds her courage, steps out from the crowd, and joins her sisters at the guillotine. Many hold Dialogues in high esteem as one of the twentieth century’s greatest operas, even for its subject alone. The intolerant repression of religion by the architects of the French Revolution—ironically carried out in the name of “liberty,” “fraternity,” and “equality”—is a story that must be told, with heroic themes befitting grand opera.

If I have reservations about the piece, it is largely because its first half is filled with abstract spiritual discussions that are poorly suited to musical treatment. This portion of the opera feels static and verbose—not to mention overlong—with Poulenc having little to do but spin exquisite filigree around the text, between increasingly powerful orchestral interludes. The opera’s second half livens up considerably, though, as the revolutionary forces close in on the convent and the nuns take their vow of martyrdom. This is a spiritual, even intellectual opera, one that examines themes of fear and grace—particularly what Poulenc termed “transfer of grace” by which one human death can redeem another. (Read more.)

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CDC Investigates Multistate Parasite Outbreak

 From Big League Politics:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating a multistate outbreak of Cyclospora, a microscopic parasite that has sickened people across the United States.

Federal health officials have not yet identified the source of the outbreak, though previous investigations have frequently linked Cyclospora infections to contaminated fresh herbs, leafy greens, berries, and other produce.

While investigators continue searching for the source, the illness caused by the parasite can produce severe gastrointestinal symptoms.

According to the CDC, Cyclospora spreads through food or water contaminated with human feces and causes the intestinal illness cyclosporiasis. Symptoms include watery diarrhea, abdominal cramps, nausea, fatigue, loss of appetite, low-grade fever, and vomiting. The agency notes that many patients experience frequent—and sometimes explosive—bowel movements.

According to the CDC’s latest published figures, 145 cases have been identified across 17 states.

New York, Texas, Illinois, and Michigan have reported the highest number of infections. Additional cases have been reported in Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

State health departments are now reporting additional cases beyond the CDC’s latest national update, suggesting the outbreak continues to expand.

Michigan health officials say they are investigating a large and growing outbreak, with more than 300 cases reported since June 22—far above the state’s typical annual total of roughly 50 cases.

New York has also reported elevated activity, with more than 100 cases identified since May 1. Officials in New York City say reported infections during the first half of the year have roughly doubled compared to the same period in 2025.

(Read more.)

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Les Dragonnades

 From LBV:

In reality, those Protestants first called themselves les inspirés (“the inspired”) and later les Raiòus (“the Royals”), whether because that was the unofficial demonym of the region or to make clear that they were not rising against the king but against the intendant of Languedoc. Jean Cavalier, Pierre Rolland Laporte, Nicolas Jouanny, and Abdias Maurel, alias Catinat—ironically a former dragoon—were their main leaders, but there were many more local leaders, prophets who proclaimed a spiritual awakening under divine inspiration, urging their followers to free their imprisoned companions.

But the camisards displayed brutality comparable to their adversaries. In September 1703, for example, they massacred the sixty Catholic inhabitants of Saturargues, and it was not an isolated case, as they repeated the atrocity in Brenoux, killing another fifty-two people, as well as in Fraissinet-de-Fourques, where they murdered forty Catholic women and children. To be fair, not all behaved the same; there were Protestant communities like Fraissinet-de-Lozère that preferred not to join the rebellion and even opposed it (which did not prevent them from suffering later reprisals as well). (Read more.)

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"A Lush, Passionate Portrait"

  From BookLife:

In the first of her Henrietta of France trilogy, Vidal (Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars) paints a lush, passionate portrait of the life of Henriette-Marie, a seventeenth century French princess descended from the Bourbons and Medicis. Wed to King Charles I of England at the tender age of fifteen, Henriette is determined to bring Catholicism back to England, despite her Protestant husband and the country’s “hatred of Catholicism.” Often buffeted by political and social forces beyond her control, Henriette, known in England as Queen Mary, faces the challenges she encounters with the courage and resolve that she draws from her deep Catholic faith.

Firmly grounded in real historical events and settings, Vidal breathes life into Henriette’s era through extensive, evocative descriptions of its clothing, food, and palaces. This attention to detail offers a tantalizing immersion in this royal world, from the elaborately-costumed “masques” she and courtiers create to entertain the King at holiday celebrations to her beloved spaniel, Hebe. Vidal also illustrates the complexity of royal life through her careful elaboration of the complicated web of marriages, kinships, and associations. Some readers will be overwhelmed by the many branches of the royal family tree, but the text’s clear exposition and strong narrative arc offer clarity and guidance.

Vidal highlights the most important characters through her vivid depiction of their personalities and motivations. Antagonist George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, creates a true sense of menace as he threatens Henriette and works to disempower her. Although she is pure and steadfast in her intentions, Henriette’s struggles to balance her devotion to her husband and to her faith will earn readers’ respect and sympathy, even if they do not share her allegiance to the Catholic church. Offering insight into the passions behind the protocols, My Queen, My Love infuses these historical figures with humanity.

Takeaway: Readers of historical fiction will appreciate the depth and nuance Vidal brings to this often overlooked historical figure. (Read more.)

"Elena Maria Vidal brings history to life again with the story of Queen Henriette Marie, complete with an unlikely but true love story of the Queen and King Charles I of England, a formidable personal enemy in the menacing Duke of Buckingham, lots of well-researched period details, and the matters of Christian faith behind many of the conflicts. An antidote to the Whiggish story that is often passed off as history in America, with its anti-monarchical bias. Though Henriette Marie is not nearly as well known as another maligned consort, Marie Antoinette, Americans should learn her story because, coming after Jamestown's founding, she was their queen." —John Beeler, A Conservative Blog for Peace

 

Available HERE.

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Rubio Overturns Walz’s Gift to Child Rapist

From The Daily BS:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says a convicted child rapist whom Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz helped shield from deportation is now out of the United States for good.

The case is quickly becoming one of the most politically damaging immigration controversies facing Walz, who is already under scrutiny for Minnesota’s sanctuary-state policies and a series of clemency decisions involving criminal illegal aliens.

At the center of the firestorm is Tue Lue Vang, a Laotian national convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl. Federal officials say Vang was scheduled for deportation when Walz and Minnesota’s Board of Pardons intervened and granted him clemency last month.

That pardon immediately raised alarms inside the Department of Homeland Security, which warned that the move could complicate federal efforts to remove him from the country.

According to Rubio, the Trump administration found another way.

“Just weeks ago, a foreign child rapist was freed to once again endanger America’s children after receiving a pardon from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz,” Rubio told Fox News Digital.

Rubio didn’t mince words. (Read more.)

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Vatican Begins Restoration of Raphael Loggias

 From The Art Newspaper:

The restoration follows two pilot projects carried out between 2019 and 2024, in which experts tested the technology that will be applied to the entire cycle.

The restoration is supported by $5.5m from the Legacy of Raphael: The Vatican and Beyond initiative, a World Monuments Fund project for restoration, training, digital documentation and dissemination. That initiative was itself funded with a $14.3m donation by the Stephen A. Schwarzman Foundation, a New York-based philanthropic organisation. The work on the loggias has also been supported by the group Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums.

Jatta adds that the installation of the new windows had been made possible with a donation by The Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums, which also financed the pilot projects.

“The new windows are absolutely essential,” Jatta says. “If the right microclimatic conditions aren’t created in that space, there’s no point in carrying out the restoration, as those areas and the frescoes would certainly deteriorate again.” (Read more.)

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The Original Nakedness and Shame

 

 From Justi Andreasen:

It is true that Adam and Eve before the Fall were naked and not ashamed. But the old Christian writers did not think of them as bare in our poor modern way. They say man was clothed with glory. That is to say, there was a rightness in him which made outer covering unnecessary. The body was not a trouble because the soul was not yet at war with itself. St. Ephrem says they were surrounded by glory. One can say it more simply still: grace had not yet gone out of them.

As the serpent is called the most subtle of the beasts, it is the most "naked" and closest to nature. It belongs to the raw pull of undifferentiated matter, the current that drags everything back toward dust. The serpent is not evil because it is powerful. It is dangerous because it is uncovered by any purpose higher than itself. It has not been named and integrated by Adam.

So when Adam and Eve ate, they felt shame because something had been lost. Like the serpent, they were now uncovered, no longer clothed in higher purpose. They had broken the law and, with it, the purpose God had given them. And so they snatch fig leaves.

Then comes that strange and merciful thing. God makes them garments of skin. The world is hard now, and He clothes them for hardness. Leaves are for summer. They will not do outside Eden. Since then men have been making larger and larger versions of the same defense. Clothes, houses, laws, customs, walls, roofs, medicine: all these are ways by which fallen creatures make life possible in a fallen world. (Read more.)

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McConnell’s Absence Gives Trump’s Voter ID Push an Unexpected Opening

 From The Daily BS:

President Donald Trump’s push for a nationwide voter ID and citizenship verification law remains stuck in the Senate, but one of its most persistent Republican opponents is suddenly off the field.

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s extended absence due to health issues has temporarily removed a reliable “no” vote from the equation, offering a small but politically significant break for supporters of the SAVE America Act. The Kentucky Republican has repeatedly bucked both Trump and much of the GOP conference on the legislation, helping stall one of the president’s signature election-security priorities.

The development does not solve the bill’s larger problem: Senate Democrats remain unanimously opposed, and Republicans still lack the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has made clear that he has no intention of detonating the chamber’s legislative filibuster to get the bill across the finish line.

“The only way you could get there is to undo or get rid of the legislative filibuster,” Thune said previously. “There aren’t even close to the votes here in the United States Senate in order to achieve that.” (Read more.)

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Book Review: "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage" by Lawrence Keeley

 From Steam Calliope Scherzos:

Before we get ahead of ourselves, though, Keeley’s study has been a long overdue contribution not just to anthropology but military history and theory as well. The mid-1990s was a time in which it still wasn’t altogether clear within academia if primitive cultures are capable of engaging in something like “total war,” or if the kind of violence they engage in could be considered “war” at all. Of course, the archeological record couldn’t have been clearer that primitive war is, in fact, war, and that it could be not only damaging but existentially threatening to entire communities. But Keeley’s main hurdle in writing War Before Civilization was not one of epistemology but rather ideology.

By the mid-90s, the field of anthropology had gone through two distinct phases that had impoverished the academic understanding of savage violence. The first treated primitive war with an air of condescension marked by ethnocentric assumptions. This attitude was best exemplified by Harry Holbert Turney-High and Quincy Wright, who composed their seminal works during the 1940s. They each understood primitive violence as a sort of pastime to alleviate boredom, or even a sporting affair. Actually, the idea that savages engage in war as a sport persisted in western culture for a surprisingly long time, and the educated would often refer to the idea in passing. In one interview from 1977, for instance, Marshall McLuhan says, “Tribal people — one of their main kinds of sport is butchering each other. It’s a full-time sport in tribal societies.” This characterization owes a lot to Turney-High and Wright, who not only minimized the seriousness of primitive war but also seriously undervalued the skill and ability with which primitives fought while overestimating the significance of civilized military organization.

But eventually, this sensibility grew to pass in favor of the second phase of anthropology: the politically correct phase. Instead of using the phrase “politically correct,” Keeley describes this sensibility as Rousseauist in nature, citing the enlightenment-era dispute between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes in which the former posited that primitive man is a “noble savage” incapable of violence as a response to Hobbes’s view of man’s natural state as a “war of all against all.” Anthropology was in an unusual situation during this time because although field reporting had revealed that primitive tribes absolutely do engage in violent conflict, many anthropologists still preferred to maintain that these tribes were essentially peaceful.(Read more.)

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Death of Baby Sophie

Vive La Reine reminds us of the death of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette's youngest child, HERE. The portrait below was originally supposed to be a happy one, of the Queen and her children preparing the cradle for the new baby. The Queen is wearing a maternity dress. However, by the time the painting was completed the baby, Madame Sophie, had died and so the artist, Madame Lebrun, had to cover the cradle with black crêpe. Here is a quote from a letter of Madame Elizabeth's:

The queen is very kind to me just now; we are going together to Saint-Cyr, which she calls my cradle. She calls Montreuil my little Trianon. I have been to hers the last few days with her, without any consequences, and there was no attention she did not show me. She prepared for me one of those surprises in which she excels; but what we did most was to weep over the death of my poor little niece [Madame Sophie.]

The Empty Cradle 

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