Tea at Trianon: Is it Too Late?

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

Friday, June 8, 2012

Is it Too Late?

On the state of the nation.

Now, we are assured that this generation of Republicans has come home to the church and confessed its sins, and is prepared to face martyrdom in the name of fiscal responsibility. Well, perhaps.

Yet, if it is difficult to see how the GOP advances toward a balanced budget, it is impossible to see how President Obama does. Would the party of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, triumphant, scale back programs that are the pride of their party – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid? Would Pelosi, Reid and Obama cut the number of bureaucrats and beneficiaries of federal programs, thereby demobilizing the unionized armies on which they depend at election time?

When FDR came to power in 1933, after his running mate, "Cactus Jack" Garner, accused Herbert Hoover of taking us "down the road to socialism," the Federal government was spending 4 percent of GDP. Today, it spends 24 percent. Under both parties, under every president since FDR, domestic spending has moved in one direction.

Ann Romney's question remains relevant.

Is the trend inexorable? Is there any turning back? Is it too late? (Read entire article.)

julygirl said...: Two former presidents in recent history have accomplished a 'balanced budget', one Republican and one Democrat, so it is not necessarily that one party spends more than the other....they are all in the pockets of their special interest groups....how else does a struggling rookie Senator and/or Congressman end up as millionaires.; June 8, 2012 at 8:01:00 AM EDT