Tea at Trianon: Rebels

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

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Rebels

Charles Coulombe has a marvelous piece called "Still Rebels, Still Tories." He says:

Indeed, the Fourth of July fairly bristles with irony, and never more than in 2007. As in my childhood, we are involved in a seemingly endless war, to which the current president is committed--come what may. What is different, however, is that we are in the midst of a social revolution, imposed by the leading elites in our society, that said president was to great degree expressly elected to halt. When I was a child, of course, LBJ was president: he fully expected his “Great Society” to result in a peaceful, yet radical, alteration in our country. But I doubt the old crook would have been happy with abortion, gay marriage, women in combat, and all the other joys of our time. Share

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: The current Presidency is all smoke and mirrors.

The difference between the two situations is that LBJ inherited the Vietnam situation and was given bad advice as to how to proceed. This Presidency invented and promoted false information in order to proceed with plans against Iraq implemented by Co-President Cheney. There were jealousies and rivalries between the CIA and the Pentagon with no consideration as to the future repercussions of their actions and how it would bankrupt this country and the Presidency.; July 4, 2007 at 10:35:00 PM EDT