Subsidiarity Starts With The Family

For John, BLUF:  Family first.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Snow White and the Household Covenant

Here is the sub-headline:

In terms of quality, the recent live action Snow White film is about as far away from the 1937 original film as one could be. More importantly it lacks a crucial message.

From Noble Cobra Magazine, by Writer David Breitenbeck, 9 April 2025.

Here is the lede plus seven:

I genuinely believe that the Snow White remake is cursed. I think that the sheer cynical disrespect that the current Disney is showing to its foundational film has goaded Uncle Walt’s spirit into a vengeful wrath, causing him to inflict it with every possible injury so as to ensure its failure. From a lead actress who couldn’t seem to open her mouth without enraging half the internet (and whose casting contradicts the very title of the film), to snubbing a whole class of actors only to replace them with vomit-inducing CGI alternatives, all the stars are aligning to make this a wreck of ages; a film that is not only unwanted, but loathed on a personal level by just about everyone who encounters it.

In that spirit, let us imitate Dante and leave this cursed creation to wallow in its own failure while we turn to better things; namely the revered original film.

To read more insightful reviews and retrospectives from David Breitenbeck, please Subscribe to The Everyman Commentary.

The story, as everyone knows, is of a young princess with ‘skin white as snow.’ Her wicked stepmother, the Queen, is jealous of the girl’s youthful beauty and forces her to work as a servant. But when even this fails to prevent the princess from overshadowing her, the Queen tries to have her murdered. The woodsman she hires for the deed, however, cannot bring himself to harm the girl and urges her to flee. Snow White then comes to the cottage of the seven dwarfs, who agree to give her shelter.

It’s a beautiful little story, full of wisdom as most fairy tales are, and Walt Disney’s adaptation is nothing short of a masterpiece. For today, however, I want to dial in and focus on the dynamics of Snow White’s role in the dwarfs’ cottage.

Despite the fact that she is desperate and fleeing for her life, Snow White doesn’t simply beg shelter from charity, much less demand it as a right. Instead, seeing the state of the place, she judges that they need a ‘mother’ to clean and take care of the cottage, and so sets to work dusting and sweeping the place with her animal friends in the hopes that the owners will let her stay in return.

This is emblematic of one of Snow White’s key character traits: that she is humble and self-effacing (in contrast to the proud and selfish Queen). Being a princess, she could theoretically demand the dwarfs help her, but the idea never crosses her mind. She looks at the situation, sees that they have a need she can fulfill, and does it gladly as a sign of good faith.

In this way Snow White claims a place in the household, which is confirmed when she finally meets the dwarfs. The arrangement they come to is not a contract, but is more like a covenant. It is not an impersonal “I will do x in exchange for y,” in which the obligations of each party are specifically spelled out and go no further. The dwarfs are, essentially, adopting Snow White in their family circle as a mother or big sister. There is an assumption, of course, that she will uphold her end of the bargain, but the arrangement doesn’t begin and end with her household duties. It is simply that she is one of them now; a member of the family, with all the unspoken rights and obligations that go with it. She shares in both the prosperity and the work of the household, and enjoys the company and protection of the rest of the family.

Subsidiarrity, in my understanding, is the way we should organize, with the family being the bedrock, and larger organizations (Local, State, Federal) existing to deal with those things that need to have more people brought together to be effectively dealt with.  The family is the bedrock.

The author too seems to see the family as the bedrock of society and the foundation of a harmonious set of relationships.  That family is not ego centered, but rather open and cooperative.  Unlike the evil Step Mother, the family wishes to maximize the value of all.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Do The Right Thing

For John, BLUF:  Being magnanimus is a sign of strength.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Macron should be a clever statesman and pardon Le Pen

From Brussels Signal, by Henry Olsen, 8 Apr8l 2025.

Here is the lede plus eight:

Marine Le Pen’s conviction for embezzlement, coupled with the court’s imposition of a five-year ban on running for public office, matters well outside of France. President Donald Trump has taken note of this, posting “FREE MARINE LE PEN” on social media.

French President Emmanuel Macron thus has yet another source of potential disagreement with the American President, as if the controversies over US tariffs and the Trump Administration’s approach toward NATO and the Ukraine-Russia war were not enough. That is something he does not want even as he surely revels privately in the potential demise of his dogged, and dangerous, foe.

Le Pen is appealing the conviction. The conviction might be overturned on appeal, or the sentence might be altered. Either could free Le Pen to run for President a fourth time and end the crisis.

But if the conviction and sentenced are upheld on appeal, Macron should burnish his standing with America and support French democracy with one simple act: he should pardon Le Pen. The French President, like the American President, has a plenary power to pardon convicted criminals under the French Constitution. That power allows him to exempt a convict from serving part or all of her sentence.

Le Pen would not have her conviction expunged. But she would be able to run again in the 2027 presidential election and campaign in public.

Macron will surely not want to do this. He clearly views Le Pen and her National Rally as dangerous to the country. That’s why he brokered the so-called “democratic alliance” to stop National Rally from winning the second round of last year’s parliamentary election.

Pardoning Le Pen serves many purposes. First, it takes away her claim of being a martyr for French democracy. Others who have been subjected to legal procedures that would end their political lives, like Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, have rallied their adherents by claiming to be subject to “lawfare” and a “political witch hunt”.

Efforts to silence a prominent conservative populist via the law usually fails to keep populists from keeping or expanding their power. Driving Austrian Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache from office because of the so-called “Ibiza affair” in 2019 did not stop his successor, Herbert Kickl, from leading the party to first place in last year’s election.

That’s what early French polls suggest would happen if Le Pen is barred from running. Her deputy, Jordan Bardella, leads in a hypothetical contest in a late March poll, retaining 93 percent of voters who would have backed Le Pen.

Yes, a long extract, but it is European politics, and thus complicated, with new and strange names.  President Macron is the leader of France and married to his school teacher.  Le Pen is the Daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, comtroversial founder of the National Front Party, now the National Raal.

i think the proposal makes sense.  Her appeal of her conviction will just keep her in the news and harden her followers.  It may well garner her sympathy amongst the centerist voters.

i was surprised at how US President Donald Trump was woven into the story.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Are we in the Midst of a Color Revolution?

For John, BLUF:  The Democrats lost in November and now they are protesting, thinking, perhaps, that that will cow the voters who voted for Donald J Trump, and cow the President Himself.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The liberals’ license:  How the left finds release in an age of rage

From The Hill, by Professor Jonathan Turley, 5 April 2025, 10:30 AM ET.

Here is the lede plus four:

“We should replace our piece of crap Constitution.”

Those words from author Elie Mystal, a regular commentator on MSNBC, are hardly surprising from someone who previously called the Constitution “trash” and urged not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate but also of “all voter registration laws.”

But Mystal’s radical rhetoric is becoming mainstream on the left, as shown by his best-selling books and popular media appearances.

There is a counter-constitutional movement building in law schools and across the country. And although Mystal has not advocated violence, some on the left are turning to political violence and criminal acts. It is part of the “righteous rage” that many of them see as absolving them from the basic demands not only of civility but of legality.

They are part of a rising class of American Jacobins — bourgeois revolutionaries increasingly prepared to trash everything, from cars to the Constitution.

Jacobins:

Commonly known as the Jacobin Club (Club des Jacobins) or simply the Jacobins (/ˈdʒækəbɪnz/; French: [ʒakɔbɛ̃]), was the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789. The period of its political ascendancy includes the Reign of Terror, during which well over 10,000 people were put on trial and executed in France, many for "political crimes".[3][4]

The author, Elie Mystal, is a graduate of Harvard Law School.  One wonders, some times, what exactly they are teaching down county.

Am I going to have to read Mr Mystal's book to understand if he even has something to reploce our current controlling document.  I grant the Constitution is not perfect, and in the beginning had compromises to get each of the thirteen states on board.  On the other hand, it has worked to provide a certain degree of prosperity for a large portion of the population and opportunity for the rest.

Yet, we see people burning Tesla vehicles and attacking dealterships.  In Lowell we have had a Tesla shot on the street.  Now, on Saturday we had demonstrations trying to reverse the results of the November past election.  Do we all still live in a Democracy?  Time will tell.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Go forth and Sin No More

For John, BLUF:  The joke goes "No, not you Mother."  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Fifth Sunday of Lent

Year C Readings

From The Gospel of St John, 8:1-11,

Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.
Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”

Thus, the value of Confession..

Regards  —  Cliff

Chris Did It

For John, BLUF:  People of all sorts continue to blame Christopher Columbus for all the ills of the world, and by extentino, "The West".  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Global warming?  Blame Christopher Columbus

From The Conservative Woman, by Freelance Journalist Henry Getley, 4 April 2025.

Here is the lede plus two:

GLOBAL warming is man-made, we are endlessly told by the climate change industry. You might think that ‘man’ in this context is a generic term for mankind. But a nutty-sounding professor has now narrowed down the culprit to one particular man . . . Christopher Columbus.

Yes, the Genoese explorer who in 1492 crossed the Atlantic from Spain in search of the Indies and instead found America (actually, he came ashore on an island in the Bahamas) is apparently the villain of the piece.

He is named and blamed in a new book called Dark Laboratory by Tao Leigh Goffe, an associate professor of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at the City University of New York.  I haven’t read it, but several reviews – even by sympathetic critics – suggest it’s opaque, rambling and eminently putdownable unless you’re fully signed up to the climate nonsense.

Frankly, the thesis of the book makes one want to shout out Falcon Code 101.  It is hard to believe the author does not realize the activities Admiral Columbus brought with him had beeen ongoing for thouands of years in the other hemisphere.  Or for that matter, in this hemisphere.  The Blog poster goes on:

She tells us that European colonisation of the Caribbean, started by Columbus, ‘first formulated the structures of modern capitalism’ via slavery and racism. The creation of monocrop agriculture, the clearing of terrestrial and marine ecosystems and the degradation of the environment ‘made territories vulnerable to extreme weather’. And so on.

I think it goes without saying that the arrival of Europeans in new lands during the age of discovery was often harmful to the indigenous inhabitants. But in this case, the author is falling into that familiar trap for historians – judging what happened in the past by modern standards. Slavery and racism are obviously reprehensible from our point of view in 2025. But, like it or not, that’s how they did things 500 years ago.

I have to admit that I thought modern capitalism started in England and The Netherlands.  Spain I think of as an exploitive economy, along the lines laid out in Why Nations Fail:  The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty.  That book is captured in a Wikipedia post, of which the follow in an extract:

They emphasize instead organizational conditions and not least the quality of the state and institutions, as well as whose purpose the state and institutions serve.  As long as the state and the institutions do not serve everyone but only an exploitative elite, it is very difficult to achieve economic development for the entire nation.  Democracy as a growth factor is also a central part of the book.

Will I read this book?  Perhaps, after I finish all the tell all books from the 2024 Presidential Election.  I currently have one on my Kindle and two prepurchased.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff