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France is being destroyed internally by arson, the murder of citizens, and the open defiance of all law, order, and moral restraint. But the greater destructive force is cowardly and amoral politicians who appease and excuse the criminals.
Opposition leader Marine LePen has warned about this coming national suicide for two decades. But only now are middle class citizens paying serious attention to her position. Some predict she will be the next, and possibly last, French president. Three days ago she addressed the nation. One excerpt:
"In a republic that respects itself, no event, no matter how dramatic, no cause, no matter how emotional can legitimize an anarchy that wants to make itself permanent, with attacks against the police and firefighters, the sackings of town halls, the burning of schools or the looting of shops.
Polarized politicians and unions who have taken on the responsibility of morally exonerating these criminal acts have likewise come out of the government; they will carry an indelible responsibility before the nation and history."
Of all the evils to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops every other. War is the patent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes, are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few.
In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people!
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
-James Madison, Political Observations, 1795
We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
-President Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961
We don’t know. Are plans being made for a magnificent sarcophagus? Something like the huge, elaborate one he imagined for Charlie Kirk? Not that I know of. When will be the day of his death? I don’t know, but his Creator has already appointed the day and the hour.
Will his funeral be meaningful, theologically? With Christian theology? I don’t know that either.
But I have been impressed with the funeral of one great nobleman who died 25 years ago at age 99, buried in Austria. His final resting place was not elaborate, but significant. It was in the crypt of a Capuchin church, the place where his royal ancestors, monarchs of a vast, 600-year-old empire, had been entombed for centuries. The crypt was locked and guarded by Capuchin friars.
Prince Otto von Habsburg, born in 1912, would have been the next in line as king of that empire, but Hitler invaded Austria and ordered the arrest and murder of the prince, who escaped into Europe and played a leading role in world affairs for ...
