Luceat!

I realize that we’re firmly in the “or so” part of the “day or so” in which I promised my next post (see previous post ‘Vive la France!’). My apologies.

For your consideration, I submit the following thesis–courtesy of one John Zmirak–on one of the major turning points of Gallic history:

If you think French peasants had the right to guillotine King Louis, then you must say that black slaves would have been right to hang George Washington. To accept the American Revolution, you must reject the French. [...]

Our leaders were sound, sober, cautious and moderate, grounding their grievances against the British king in English Common Law, the rights of local governments, and countless carefully reasoned judicial and legal precedents. The French aristocrats who voted with the ideologues and the Mob to murder their king were irresponsible, frivolous, and finally cowardly – and most of them ended up on the scaffold, like the poor Duc d’Orleans. Every radical revolution eats its young – as the intellectuals of France, then Russia, Germany, and Cambodia (to name a few) would learn. [Read more here]

I’ll hazard a guess that if you received your elementary and/or secondary education in the U.S. sometime in the last several decades, your history teachers didn’t present the French Revolution as a senseless bloodbath (if they did, please share in the comment box). More’s the pity, non?

Zmirak has co-authored two books currently enjoying pride-of-place on my coffee table [click to go to Amazon]:

They might look cheesy at first glance, but are surprisingly hilarious, orthodox, snarky, insightful, and appetizing (due to the gourmet recipes scattered throughout each). No aspiring Catholic theology nerd’s/cultural commentator’s library is complete without these two volumes.
(Note to Mr. Zmirak: I accept donations!)