The Pandemic shall mutate into oblivion sometime relatively soon. When it does, we will all be left with the aftermath. Wrecked economies, shuttered businesses, and life opportunities lost are only a small part of it all. Worse still are the questions that may be asked. When the rulership had us put on our masks, they took off theirs. The experience of the past two years make plain a reality only a few saw before: the modern citizen has only those rights his rulers deign to give him, and these may be taken away at any time. In a word, the myth of democracy is dead.
Vienna and New Orleans, despite everything, have remained themselves in the face of larger cultures, consciously or otherwise, attempting (with some success) to reduce them to mere sameness.
In peace or war, the Church Year was a large factor in the home life of the Imperial family, as it was for many of their subjects from Tyrol to Transylvania. Charles and Zita loved Christmas; during Advent Charles taught his children to make small sacrifices. For each of these they could put a straw into the empty manger of the Nativity scene. By the time the Christ Child would be installed on Christmas Eve, there was generally a good supply of straw!
Our ancestors were far wiser than we; they knew that a legal system cannot be an end in itself. It must serve a higher power. If to-day’s courts and judges are to be allowed to retain the prestige and trappings of their illustrious predecessors, let them be once more made to serve what those judges of the past served.
Reigning or not, it is far from beyond the realm of possibility that one or more Royals may one day find the situation forcing or inviting them to mobilise precisely those traditions they embody in order to save their people from whatever dire fate otherwise awaits them.
Although I myself have not hunted for any game in decades save what can be found in restaurants, I do not approve of these limitations; in fact I cannot really trust any leader who does not hunt. It would be much better if they all did.
October once more brought us that festival called in the United States Columbus Day, in much of Latin America the
One easy way to cultivate the humility and sanity we need is to celebrate the upcoming festivals of the Autumn months rightly and well.
All is not yet lost for those who believe in Christendom. Saner leadership seems to be emerging in Hungary and elsewhere in Central Europe. So, too, in Western Europe a new generation is looking for answers.
Beyond the mere personalities involved, the fault lies with the hubris that has dogged us from our political beginning—the idea that we could or should remake the world in our own perfect image.
How are we to think about the relationship between the United States and Europe?
