Death of a Family

 

July 17 is a sad anniversary. To quote author and historian Gareth Russell:

It had been a horrible, violent, lawless death - carried out in secret, without a trial or without justice. It was a fate that was to befall millions of ordinary Russians in the years under Communist rule - a system of government which has still, inexplicably, managed to escape the historical condemnation it so richly deserves. The Soviet Union was a depraved and genocidal regime, which even on its best days bore all the qualities of a sociopath. It was devoid of morality or respect for human life. It was infinitely worse than any regime in Russian history. And although it had technically come to power in October 1917, it was the events in Yekaterinburg on 17th July 1918 that should arguably be seen as the Soviet Union's true birth-date. Everything that defined it and everything that it was prepared to resort to was contained in how it executed the Romanovs. As Trotsky so rightly pointed out, with his chilling disinterest in human suffering - it proved that there was no going back. It defined what was to come. (Read entire post.)

 

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Why We’re Dismantling the ICC

 From U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

Most of us would struggle to imagine a world in which U.S. soldiers, police officers, Border Patrol agents and elected leaders could be dragged before an international court, tried by judges from random countries across the globe, found guilty under international laws we neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America.

But that is what the International Criminal Court now claims the power to do.

The ICC was born at the turn of the century. At first, it was marketed as a narrow backstop to prosecute the gravest crimes. Now the ICC and its allies seek a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states—and to prosecute and arrest our citizens. (Read more.)

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Rare Royal Crowns

 From Archaeology News:

The exhibition, titled “Hidden Within,” is now open at the Vilnius Church Heritage Museum. Visitors see burial regalia placed with King Alexander Jagiellon, Queen Elizabeth of Austria, and Queen Barbara Radziwill during the 16th century. The collection includes three funeral crowns, a scepter, an orb, jewelry, and personal items once buried with the rulers. Many experts believed these objects had disappeared forever.

The story began in 1931, when spring floods exposed royal crypts beneath Vilnius Cathedral. Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the three rulers along with their burial insignia. As World War II approached, church officials hid the collection to protect it from looting and damage. Part of the cathedral treasury returned to light in 1985, though the royal burial objects stayed missing for decades. (Read more.)

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Marie-Antoinette and the Carmelite Order

Madame Louise of France

Marie-Antoinette as Dauphine

The connection between the Carmelite Order and the Royal House of France originated in the Middle Ages, when St. Louis IX encountered the hermits on Mt. Carmel and brought them to France. When the Discalced Reform came to France from Spain in the early seventeenth century, the royal family assisted the nuns with their patronage. The French court was shaken in 1674 when Louise de la Vallière, the former mistress of Louis XIV, publicly begged the queen's forgiveness and entered a Carmelite monastery. In his book To Quell the Terror, William Bush details the many connections of the later Bourbons with Carmel, particularly the patronage of Queen Marie Lesczynska and her daughter Madame Louise. When Louise herself chose to become a Carmelite nun in 1770, it cemented the spiritual ties between those in the worldliness of Versailles and those in the austerity of the cloister.

Marie-Antoinette of Austria married the Dauphin in the same year that Madame Louise entered the monastery. The young princess offered to represent Louis XV at the ceremony at which his daughter Louise received the habit of Carmel, since it was too painful for the king and the rest of his family to be present. So it was the teenage Marie-Antoinette who veiled the new "Soeur Thérèse de Saint-Augustin."

In the years the followed, Marie-Antoinette would visit her husband's aunt three times year at the Carmel, of which she was a benefactress. As the Queen's maid Madame Campan relates in her Memoirs:

The Court went to visit her about three times a year, and I recollect that the Queen, intending to take her daughter there, ordered me to get a doll dressed like a Carmelite for her, that the young Princess might be accustomed, before she went into the convent, to the habit of her aunt, the nun.

According to Madame Campan, Madame Louise as a nun was deeply involved in church affairs; she was always petitioning her nephew's wife, so that Marie-Antoinette called her: "the most intriguing little Carmelite in the kingdom." It was at the request of Madame Louise, however, that Marie-Antoinette granted a dowry to a poor, pious girl named Mademoiselle Lidoine, so that she could enter the Carmel of Compiègne. Mademoiselle Lidoine became the Mother Prioress of the heroic Martyrs of Compiègne, who like Marie-Antoinette, died on the guillotine during the French Revolution.

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America’s Food Shift Under RFK Jr.

 From Sharyl's Substack:

Recent polls show a clear shift toward healthier eating habits among Americans.

According to one 2025 survey, more people (57%) followed a specific diet or eating pattern in the past year — up from just 36% in 2018 — with high-protein diets leading the way at 23% (up from 4% in 2018).

Americans are actively trying to eat more protein (70%) and fiber, while defining “healthy food” by traits like “fresh,” “low in sugar,” “minimal processing,” and “limited artificial ingredients.”

They’re also rating their own diets healthier than in 2020 and seeking benefits like more energy.

While dramatic overnight bans haven’t materialized, noticeable changes are appearing on store shelves, in school cafeterias, and even at some restaurants—mostly through voluntary industry moves rather than strict mandates. (Read more.)

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Armenia Was the Most Important Buffer State Between Rome and Persia

 From The Collector:

The Roman Empire fought for centuries with powerful Persian dynasties in the east, which prevented it from establishing a fixed eastern frontier. The Parthian Empire and then the Sasanian Empire were among Rome’s greatest and most powerful rivals, and their conflicts often took place in the lands between their territories. One of those lands was Armenia, a kingdom situated between Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus. Control of Armenia provided a key defensive barrier and control of important trade routes. The Kingdom of Armenia became one of the most important buffer states between the two mighty empires.

Armenia is located in what has always been a geographically sensitive region. In ancient times, it was located between the eastern Roman provinces and the western territories of the Parthian and, later, the Sasanian Empire. Armenia forms a natural bridge between Anatolia, the Iranian plateau, and Mesopotamia. It is also close to an important transregional route connecting the Black Sea basin to the Near East.

The territory of Armenia is defined by rugged highlands, making the Armenian plateau rich in mountains and deep valleys, with limited passes. These passages were crucial because they directed armies and traders along predictable routes. These vast mountain ranges gave Armenia a great advantage because it was almost unconquerable. Consequently, the major powers like Rome and Persia, instead of conquering, often sought to secure the allegiance and loyalty of the Armenian crown. (Read more.)

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Augustinian Traces in Louis XVI

 

There is some amazing new scholarship about Louis XVI. Here is a paper about Louis XVI's spirituality as formed by his education, which influenced his future actions. From Dr. Philip Diaz-Lewis via the History of European Ideas:

This article argues that Louis XVI’s student notes, the Réflexions sur mes Entretiens avec M. le duc de la Vauguyon reveal a coherent Augustinian Platonist ethics derived from Fénelon, in which humanité functions as a divine exemplar idea through which moral principles are known and royal virtues specified. Against existing interpretations that oppose Louis’s reformism to his attachment to sacral monarchy, it proposes that the same philosophical framework can be used to interpret both his constitutional initiatives and his maintenance of traditional court ritual. The argument proceeds by reconstructing the Dauphin’s formation under La Vauguyon, Moreau, and Berthier, then by a close reading of key Réflexions passages on God, natural law and humanité, interpreted with the aid of the Dictionnaire de Trévoux lexicon. (Read more.)

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The US Should Exit the UN

 From Brownstone Insights:

The UN is often viewed as an ineffectual bureaucracy that occasionally does some good. It is nothing so benevolent. Its origins may have been well-meaning, but the current UN has become what it claims to oppose. The US should leave the UN altogether and immediately, especially since its unjust policies are likely to get worse…and soon.

The UN’s Original Mission

The UN Charter (1945) opens,

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED…to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women…

The Preamble of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states,

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Article 2 of the Declaration provides,

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex…

‘All human beings are equal’ is the basis of Western justice, whether the equality is under nature, God, or law. Instead of pursuing equality, however, the UN is now a woke and corrupt actor that creates inequality and division. The UN’s financial malfeasance, the sexual abuse by field personnel, its demonization of the West…are well documented in the 104-page report From Watchdogs to Ideologues: How Politicized UN Rapporteurs Are Subverting Human Rights by the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch.

The UN’s demonstrated commitment is to social justice or a wokeness rooted in equity, not equality. Equity seeks the redistribution of wealth and power to those who are considered oppressed from those who are considered oppressors. Equity is the opposite of equality under the law. (Read more.)

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Does King Priam of Troy Appear in Hittite Records?

 From The Greek Reporter:

King Priam was the famous king of Troy during the Trojan War. It was his son, Paris Alexander, who took Helen back to Troy and inadvertently caused the enormous war with the Greeks. Priam himself was allegedly a powerful monarch. He was married to a princess from the nearby kingdom of Phrygia, which itself was a very wealthy and powerful kingdom.

The father of Priam was Laomedon, the king who had fortified the city of Troy. He was the last king in a dynasty going all the way back to Dardanus, some five generations prior to him. While many of the kings in this line had Greek names, scholars generally interpret Priam’s name to be Luwian. This was an Anatolian language common in the Bronze Age.

Traditionally, scholars believe Priam first appears in Homer’s Iliad. However, some researchers claim he appears in records, such as those of the Hittites, long before this.

What are the records in question? They are Hittite documents dating to the 13th century BCE, particularly the middle and late part of that century. These documents reveal that a certain war leader named Piyama-Radu was active in Western Anatolia in that era. (Read more.)

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