Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France

A contemporary engraving. Share

The Tragedy of Race in America

From Crisis:

“Civil rights” leaders and opportunistic politicians, in effect, have told people in the Black underclass for a long time that they don’t have to be responsible. All of their woes are caused by “racism,” instead of their actions or inaction. They have bestowed upon it what I call an “angel complex.” The effect of this is just to encourage more anti-social, irresponsible, and destructive (including self-destructive) behavior. They have also led it to believe—contrary to the clear evidence—that they can only be victims of racial prejudice, never perpetrators of it. So, the Justice Department doesn’t make an issue of election-day harassment by members of the New Black Panther Party. The Obama administration hardly mentions interracial crime targeting Caucasians, even though the federal government’s own crime statistics indicate that it is much more frequent than the other way around.

Then there are ongoing racial preference policies in the workplace and education (even if the most egregious schemes in public higher education have been disallowed by the Supreme Court). If it were the other way around these would be considered blatant racial discrimination that would bring down the full force of federal and state law.

School textbooks exaggerate the role and contributions of members of racial and other minority groups (even homosexuals) in American history, while dismissing or even denigrating towering figures like our Founding Fathers. They even treat as a given such spurious claims as that Africa was the cradle of the human race and civilization. It’s interesting that surveys are increasingly showing that Caucasians believe themselves to be victims of race prejudice, even while many “civil rights” apologists insist that such “reverse racism” isn’t possible. Curiously, while these same apologists are eager to accuse the Republican party, conservatives, Tea Partiers, etc. of “racism” they conveniently ignore the fact that the Democrats were the party of Jim Crow (let’s recall the one party “solid” Democratic South) and, before that, of slavery.

What has happened with race in America is what Pope St. John XXIII cautioned about in the encyclical Pacem in Terris (#97) regarding ethnic and other minorities in the developing world. As a reaction to their problems or past injustices, they “frequently tend to magnify unduly” their people’s characteristics, exalting them “even above those human values which are common to all mankind.” In effect, in the name of equality propagandists have made minorities (racial and in other categories) unequal—not just by officially favoring them, but also by viewing them as not subject to the same moral and other weaknesses and temptations as the rest of the human race and as not bound by the same moral law. Racial equality and minority advancement, to say nothing of brotherhood, cannot result from pretending that a situation is other than it is or routinely pointing accusing fingers without justification.

Good race relations must proceed from truth. Human dignity is not a one-way street. It cannot be achieved for minority groups by denigrating what’s called the “majority”; it has to prevail for both. As Blessed Pope Paul VI said in the encyclical Populorum Progressio (#44), a better world must be brought about “without one group making progress at the expense of the other.” There are some who think that it’s just for historically dispossessed minorities to thump the other side when they get the chance. In fact, not only is that not true justice but also shows an absence of the social charity crucial for good race relations and for a sound political community generally. (Read more.)

Share

Arrival in Strasbourg

The new Dauphine of France enters the first major French city on May 7, 1770. Share

The Importance of Myths and Fairy Tales for Children

From Crisis:

Beyond the fact that they do not take away from a child’s faith, myths and fairy tales are an essential part of early education because they provide a basis for conservative and traditional thinking and ultimately point to Christianity. Part of living conservatism is giving children a conservative education, and that must begin with what tradition has passed down to us, for the traditions that have been preserved by society over time are good and necessary for a flourishing human life. Myths and fairy tales encompass our common human desires and experiences, and human desire is ultimately fulfilled in Christianity. Grounding children in these tales, grounds them in Christianity.

The earliest exposure children have to Western thought comes through what we read to them. And while authors like Sandra Boynton and Dr. Seuss are fun, they lack the depth of tradition. When it comes to literary education, nursery rhymes are the place where I start. Children’s minds are formed by the words and concepts embodied in the rhymes, and they learn how to cleverly use language. The content of the nursery rhymes ranges from extremely practical, to moral life lessons, to imaginative characters. As children hear nursery rhymes, they start to memorize them, applying them to themselves and to the world around them. The nursery rhymes they hear are inherently conservative, teach them that there is right and wrong, and demonstrate to them that the world has a certain order.

Following from nursery rhymes are fairy tales. There is something about the strange twists and turns of the world of fairies, princesses, and giants that draws in a child’s imagination. Children are drawn up into the story and then they act them out. They know that the fairy tales are not actually part of real life, but they love to think about them and imagine with them. The stories also often contain great moral value, teaching children a lesson about how to be virtuous, good manners, or simply what makes a person good or bad. Fairy tales do this better then a modern tale, since they tend to not water down consequences, but exaggerate them to make the point more clear. Children love this. Fairy tales have been passed down through the generations, first orally, and later committed to writing. These tales are rooted in history and tradition as they tie us to those who came before. When children learn the stories, they are learning to conserve and know about the past. They care about what happened “once upon a time.” The fairy tales draw them into the community that is all of humanity. (Read more.)

Share

Opening of the Estates General

May 5, 1789. Share

Liberal Arts for All

From Atlantic:

The problem facing the humanities, in my view, isn’t just about the humanities. It’s about the liberal arts generally, including math, science, and economics. These form half of the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects, but if the goal of an education is simply economic advancement and technological power, those disciplines, just like the humanities, will be—and to some degree already are—subordinated to future employment and technological progress. Why shouldn’t educational institutions predominately offer classes like Business Calculus and Algebra for Nurses? Why should anyone but hobbyists and the occasional specialist take courses in astronomy, human evolution, or economic history? So, what good, if any, is the study of the liberal arts, particularly subjects like philosophy?  Why, in short, should plumbers study Plato?

My answer is that we should strive to be a society of free people, not simply one of well-compensated managers and employees. Henry David Thoreau is as relevant as ever when he writes, “We seem to have forgotten that the expression ‘a liberal education’ originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely, was considered worthy of slaves only.” (Read more.)

Share

A Sketch of Louis XVI

 Signed "Edmund J. Sullivan 1908". Via Tiny-Librarian. Share

Biopolitical Tyranny

From First Things:

Milbank further argues that gay marriage is not about gay rights per se but instead about the modern state’s continuing expansion of its power and persistent elimination of all rivals. Legalization of gay marriage “would end public recognition of the importance of marriage as a union of sexual difference. But the joining together and harmonisation of the asymmetrical perspectives of the two sexes are crucial both to kinship relations over time and to social peace.”

This union of difference “has always been the very ‘grammar’ of social relating as such. The abandonment of this grammar would thus imply a society no longer primarily constituted by extended kinship, but rather by state control and merely monetary exchange and reproduction.” From this angle, the push for gay marriage appears as “a strategic move in the modern state’s drive to assume direct control over the reproduction of the population, bypassing our interpersonal encounters. This is not about natural justice, but the desire on the part of biopolitical tyranny to destroy marriage and the family as the most fundamental mediating social institution.”

He acknowledges that these lines have already been crossed with the allowance of sperm donation and surrogate motherhood, both of which invite “psychological confusion, family division and social conflict.” Britain (and America too) has “sleep-walked into the legalisation of practices whose logic and implications have never been seriously debated.” (Read more.)

Share

Where Did the Celts Come From?

From Irish Central:

The story of the Celts began 5,000 years ago in the nomadic steppes of Central Asia when the Kurdan people tamed the horse and then began a southward trek first into the Caucasus (Around 2400 BC) where the Indo European culture emerged, then into Anatolia from whence arose the mighty Hittite empire and then finally around 1800 BC into the Baltic regions, into what is now Eastern and Central Europe where the Unetice culture began.

From that migration in the mid Bronze Age emerged the Italians, the Venetians, the Illyrian, and the Celtic people, who went on to reach Hibernia. One continuous migration then that pushed out originally from Central Asia some 2,500 years later found itself poised on the rim of the Mediterranean, the region of the south, the land of sun, around 1000 BC.

The Latin branch of the Celtic family poured southwards across the Alps and claimed sunny fertile Italy and created a Roman civilization. There were wars, alliances, victories, and defeats and in the end the Romans an offshoot of the same originating stock from which the Northern Celts had come, took full possession of the Italian peninsula. After the defeat of Carthage the Romans became completely dominant.

Stuck in the North the Celts marked up on 800-year trek seeking to invade sunnier lands. The Celts of old always looked southwards. They sacked Rome in 390 BC and later when Hannibal crossed the Alps and drove towards Rome Celtic tribes accompanied him but both were defeated by Rome. (Read more.)

And HERE is an article about a Celtic chieftain found in France. Share