Good morning all & at this time in 1936, King Edward VIII, witnessed by his brothers, the Royal Princes, signed the Instrument of Abdication, becoming the first British monarch to surrender the throne, so that he could marry Mrs Wallis Simpson. Image
In 1936, Edward VIII's marriage to the scandal-plagued Wallis Simpson needed the approval of not only the British Prime Minister but all of the Empire's various Prime Ministers. The conservative Australian Prime Minister, Joseph Lyons, a devout Catholic, refused his approval.
The British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, a good Tory with a very keen sense of public opinion, put forward 3 options to the empire's PMs - Edward marries Queen Wallis / Edward marries Mrs Simpson who is *not* Queen Wallis / or Abdication - and Lyons etal said Abdication.
Edward VIII was King but had never been coronated & the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time refused to coronate E8 if he was married to Mrs Simpson. The King's mother, Queen Mary, despised Mrs Simpson & was mindful of the enormous WW1 sacrifices of the Empire's subjects.

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More from @GrayConnolly

26 Nov
A very happy Thanksgiving to all our American sisters and brothers who are today giving thanks that they were once subjects of the British Crown and lamenting the seditious activities of 1776.
In all seriousness, were there no American rebellion in 1776, then there is no British settlement of Australia in 1788, which means the French expedition of Comte de La Pérouse likely claims and then colonises the Australian continent, and we are all speaking French ....
No American rebellion in 1776, no British settlement of Australia in 1788, no French war indebtedness leading to 1789, thus the French Crown under Comte de La Pérouse settles Australia .... thus Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI are Terre Le Australie's monarchs.
Read 4 tweets
22 Nov
On this day in 1963, the US President, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas. Kennedy was a naval officer and war hero in WWII, then a Congressman and Senator. A complex man whose presidency was cut short, yet was also significant for the crises it faced in its 1000 days.
Kennedy served in WW2 in the US Navy - by contrast to the Boomer generation & Vietnam, young Kennedy, with a terrible medical history, lied in order to join the US Navy, first serving in Naval Intelligence and then in the SW Pacific.
In 1943, the US Navy's PT-109, serving in the Solomon Islands campaign. is rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri. The boat's Skipper, LT(JG) John F. Kennedy, swam for 4 hours to rescue & then save his sailors. Australian coastwatcher, SBLT Arthur Evans, helped save the crew.
Read 9 tweets
21 Nov
Very sound #Catholic reading for a Sunday on left by ⁦@BarnasJoe⁩ .... sadly on right is a very amateurish caricature that is doing the rounds & is a form of penance one must endure. We must be understanding of error but vigilant in its correction
That ‘against integralism’ piece was so bad. I am not even an integralist (albeit it asks good questions about a just society) and this review was just a bonfire of straw men amid the spirit of 1965.
Catholic theology needs a “prisoner swap” with higher protestant theology. This is abysmal. Also Catholics use Tradition not “tradition”. This is just a hot mess of 1965 redux
Read 4 tweets
21 Nov
Noting debates here over the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu (March-May 1954), it remains my position that the French loss (esp post-Korean War armistice) was a needless disaster & that the Allies should have helped the French resist the Communist insurgency. I blame Ike. 🇫🇷 ⚜️
The brilliant war correspondent & historian, Bernard Fall, wrote superb histories of the French experience in Indochina, include the Dien Bien Phu denouement
Bernard Fall's account of the end of the French war in Indochina at Dien Bien Phu was a lesson that awaited 'learning', less for the successor Vietnam War (which was a just war of assistance to Sth Vietnam) than for the Afghan War of our times.
Read 5 tweets
21 Nov
Look forward to the Media taking responsibility for cheering on a 20 year War so that NATO could bring weird European liberal norms to tribal & primitive Afghans that hated us as occupiers & in which our local allies were often pederast Warlords. We need a complete accounting.
For example, Laura Bush thought the Afghan war was important enough for the 'Afghan women' but not so important for her own daughters to enlist .... Guess what the media cheered on....?

theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
More here - apparently we are all now occupying Afghanistan to bring Brooklyn to Bagram .... you can never withdraw. Ever

nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…
Read 5 tweets
19 Nov
A moral equation of the 'body count' between abortions and state executions is simply absurd....also, an execution usually follows an exhaustive if at times flawed process. They are two separate species of 'death penalty' & culpability of the 'executed'.
Biggest problem for advocates of the death penalty: the criminal justice system can and does make horrifically unjust errors.

Biggest problem for opponents of the death penalty: what do you do with those tried and convicted at Nuremberg in 1945-1946?
What if the death penalty is to be viewed, historically at least, as the domestic application of war powers the State will use abroad? The Sovereign's duty was to protect the realm, against enemies foreign and domestic. Do those to be 'droned' deserve any due process?
Read 4 tweets

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