Tea at Trianon: Freedom Isn’t Free

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, August 5, 2019

Freedom Isn’t Free

From Andrew Klavan at the Daily Wire:

That's the whole problem with the Left and with leftism; every free thing they offer you costs you not only money, it costs you liberty. If the government can take your money and give it to someone else, they own and control your time and labor. If they can regulate every aspect of your life, they can pass laws without your consent. If the government runs health care, they get to decide how you treat yourself and ultimately who lives and who dies. If they can outlaw certain kinds of speech, as "hate speech" or as a campaign finance violation, they decide who you are and what you think. Every insult they throw at us is meant to distract us from this one important point.

Racism, Islamophobia, climate denial, every single slur they hit us with is meant to take our minds off our real concern because it's not racist to oppose humongous government entitlements. It's a defense of liberty. It's not phobic to question restrictive tenets of a religion. It's a defense of liberty. And it's not some kind of thought crime to question whether more government power is going to do one damn thing to help whatever troubles the climate might have.

We're fighting for our liberty. Too often we on the Right get all wonky and practical about our ideas when we point out the Democrat programs don't work. They don't. But even if they did, they take our liberty. We point out that capitalism beats socialism. It does. But more important, capitalism supports and incentivizes liberty. We point out that identity politics is bigotry in disguise. It is and it's not much of a disguise. If you ask me. (Read more.)