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Last week, before an audience of millions of Americans, the new president made a telling statement. Alluding to the American founders, President Barack Obama, in his Inaugural Address, stated: “The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.” This seemed to be a reference to the Declaration of Independence, or at least to the principles in that sacred...

December 22, 2008, 1:30 a.m. A Vindication of Edmund Burke An NRO Flashback EDITOR’S NOTE: Edmund Burke biographer Conor Cruise O’Brien died this past weekend at the age of 91. The O’Brien piece below was the cover story in the December 17, 1990, issue of National Review. I. TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES On November 1, 1790, Edmund Burke’s most famous book, Reflections on the Revolution in France, was published. It is important to get the title right. The book is often referred to as Reflections on the French Revolution. The book’s real title adequately reveals Burke’s intentions. Burke’s point, in...

It is the internet site that contains dark family secrets, unspeakable truths and appalling injustice. The French log on to it in trepidation and in private. Les Guillotinés offers the most complete online list yet established of the French Revolution’s victims and invites users to discover the answer to a terrible question: “Do you have an ancestor who was decapitated?” Hundreds of thousands of people have consulted the death base, created by Raymond Combes, a computer programmer and amateur genealogist. Many more are likely to follow suit. According to one estimate, up to five million French people are descended from...

Virtue and Terror, by Maximilien Robespierre (Verso, 160 pp., $14.95) and On Practice and Contradiction, by Mao Zedong (Verso, 160 pp., $14.95) These two books appear in a new series, “Revolutions,” published by Verso, a well-known British firm specializing in radical leftist gobbledygook. The books come with introductions by Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian psychoanalyst and social theorist, who assaults both the English language and the intelligence of those who actually manage to figure out what he’s saying. If you think that’s harsh, here’s a representative Žižekian sentence: “The claim that the people does exist is the basic axiom of ‘totalitarianism,’...

High school cheerleaders must now cheer for girls' teams as often as for boys' teams thanks to federal education officials' interpretations of Title IX, the civil rights law that mandates equal playing fields for both sexes. According to The New York Times, almost no one directly involved wants this -- not the cheerleaders, not the fans, not the boys' teams, and not even the girls' teams. But it doesn't matter: The law coerces cheerleaders to cheer at girls' games. Of all the myths that surround Left-Right differences, one of the greatest is that the Left values liberty more than the...

French Revolution Catholic Encyclopedia on CD-ROM Contains 11,632 articles. Browse off-line, ad-free, printer-friendly. Get it here for only $33 plus FREE shipping worldwide The last thirty years have given us a new version of the history of the French Revolution, the most diverse and hostile schools having contributed to it. The philosopher, Taine, drew attention to the affinity between the revolutionary and what he calls the classic spirit, that is, the spirit of abstraction which gave rise to Cartesianism and produced certain masterpieces of French literature. Moreover he admirably demonstrated the mechanism of the local revolutionary committees and showed how...

The American attitude toward the French Revolution has been generally favorable—naturally enough for a nation itself born in revolution. But as revolutions go, the French one in 1789 was among the worst. True, in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity, it overthrew a corrupt regime. Yet what these fine ideals led to was, first, the Terror and mass murder in France, and then Napoleon and his wars, which took hundreds of thousands of lives in Europe and Russia. After this pointless slaughter came the restoration of the same corrupt regime that the Revolution overthrew. Aside from immense suffering, the...

Police plea on macabre book find The ledger was bound in human skin, in accordance with practice Police are trying to locate the owner of a 300-year-old ledger, bound in human skin, found in a Leeds road. Written mainly in French, its macabre covering was said to be a regular sight during the French Revolution. In the 18th and 19th Centuries it was common to bind accounts of murder trials in the killer's skin - known as anthropodermic bibliopegy. The book was discovered in The Headrow and may have been discarded after a burglary, detectives said. They said the...

"It is up to the readers to decide whether our intention — to examine and reflect on the great issues of our time, including the West, Europe, Christianity, Islam, war, and bioethical questions — has achieved its goal. Whether our concerns can be addressed. And whether our suggestions deserve to be pursued." - from the Preface. The following is an excerpt from the chapter, "The Spiritual Roots of Europe: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow". It was originally an address given by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the Italian Senate on May 13, 2004. We must now consider the process by which...

Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, by Abbé Augustin Barruél The years 1796 to 1798 saw the publication of two important presentations of evidence concerning an international conspiracy, then only decades old, which had devastated France and was threatening the entire civilized world. That conspiracy had coalesced into a continuing organizational structure with the founding of the Order of the Illuminati by Adam Weishaupt on May 1, 1776 in Ingolstadt, Bavaria. The conspirators in the Order came from the top levels of society, and their ultimate goal was the destruction of all existing religious and political institutions, all forms...

As regular readers in this column know, my reporting senior and lawful sovereign is His Imperial Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II. When I finally report in to that great Oberste Heeresleitung in the sky, I expect to do so as the Kaiser’s last soldier. Why? Well, beyond Bestimmung, the unhappy fact is that Western civilization’s last chance of survival was probably a victory by the Central Powers in World War I. Their defeat let all the poisons of the French Revolution loose unchecked, which is the main reason that we now live in a moral and cultural cesspool.

The intellectual struggle worldwide today is now between the beliefs encapsulated in the American Revolution and those in the French. It is interests versus reason.First, some background. During the Middle Ages, the power of kings was checked by the a belief in the higher laws of God, to which kings and commoner alike - the nation, country, or kingdom, in short, the State -- were subject. But with the 16th century Reformation and the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism, the battle was decided for the State. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 ended the Wars of Religion, and established the...

Did anyone catch this the other night? The common attempt to link the American revolution and the French was certainly not present here. The differences couldn't be more blunt. Robespierre, Marat and the rest of their gang were nothing less then brutal totalitarian mass murderers.

Current 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1990s     November 2004Faking History THE EDITORMake no mistake, history is written by the victors. One need only observe the power exercised over popular imagination by the all-conquering secular humanists of our day, whose agnosticism and atheism currently underpin Western culture. A major part of reinforcing their secular status quo is the prevalence of studiously false, anti-Catholic depictions of epochal eras and events. Long debunked caricatures and clichés - from the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ to the Crusades to the Reformation and beyond - still dominate their revisionist films, documentaries, literature and texts....

A book review of Leigh Ann Whaley’s “Radicals: Politics and Republicanism in the French Revolution” (2000, Sutton Publishing, 212 pp., ISBN: 07509-22389)Contrasting RevolutionsEven though politicians and some historians in both America and Europe have likened the French and American Revolutions, these two landmark events of world history were as dissimilar as the men who forged them. The American Revolution (1775-1783) was a war for independence from England, a war for self-governance, as well as a thunderous political event that led to the affirmation of the Natural Rights of men – namely, life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. The...

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) - French royalists staged a pageant-filled funeral Tuesday for a tiny, rock-hard relic they hailed as the heart cut from Louis XVII, who died at age 10 in a filthy revolutionary prison. A hearse brimming with lilies - the symbol of the French crown - delivered a crystal vase containing the heart to the Saint-Denis Basilica. There, it was placed in a royal crypt containing the remains of Louis XVII's parents, Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI. After two centuries of mystery surrounding the boy's fate, DNA tests have convinced many historians that the relic passed secretly from person...

PARIS, France (AP) -- The heart of the 10-year-old heir to France's throne was cut from his body when he died in prison, pickled, stolen, returned, and DNA-tested two centuries later. Next week, Louis XVII's heart will be placed in France's royal crypt north of Paris now that genetic testing has persuaded many historians that the tiny petrified heart is almost certainly the real thing. In ceremonies on Monday and Tuesday, European royalty will honor the little boy who became a pawn of the French Revolution, dying alone in a filthy prison. After a Mass on Tuesday, his heart will...

A SURPRISING DEFENCE It is true that a man who believed things completely contrary to the convictions of today's fundamental preachers and educators could be exalted and defended by them. Of course, I believe this is done primarily because our fundamental brethren know little of what either Dr. Westcott or Dr. Hort really believed and taught.

CHRISTIANITY AND CONTRADICTION IN HISTORYChristopher Dawson | 1939 Is history a reasonable process or is it essentially incalculable and irrational? It seems to me that the Christian is bound to believe that there is a spiritual purpose in history -- that it is subject to the designs of Providence and that somehow or other God’s will is done. But that is a very different thing from saying that history is rational in the ordinary sense of the word. There are, as it were, two levels of rationality, and history belongs to neither of them. There is the sphere of...

A TALE OF TWO REVOLUTIONS Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). by Robert A. Peterson The year 1989 marks the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. To celebrate, the French government is throwing its biggest party in at least 100 years, to last all year. In the United States, an American Committee on the French Revolution has been set up to coordinate programs on this side of the Atlantic, emphasizing the theme, "France and America: Partners in Liberty." But were the French and American Revolutions really similar? On the surface, there were parallels. Yet over the past two centuries, many observers...