Tea at Trianon: "America First" Rejected

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, June 6, 2016

"America First" Rejected

From Chronicles:

As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America's broken borders and Bill Clinton's trade debacles like NAFTA, Hillary Clinton is trying to peel off independents and Republicans by painting Trump as "temperamentally unfit" to be commander in chief. Clinton contends that a Trump presidency would be a national embarrassment, that his ideas are outside the bipartisan mainstream of U.S. foreign policy, and that he is as contemptuous of our democratic allies as he is solicitous of our antidemocratic adversaries.

In portraying Trump as an intolerable alternative, Clinton will find echoes in the GOP establishment and among the Kristol-Kagan neocons, many of whom have already signed an open letter rejecting Trump. William Kristol has recruited one David French to run on a National Review-Weekly Standard line to siphon off just enough votes from the GOP nominee to tip a couple of swing states to Clinton. Robert Kagan contributed an op-ed to a welcoming Washington Post saying the Trump campaign is "how fascism comes to America."

Yet, if Clinton means to engage on foreign policy, this is not a battle Trump should avoid. For the lady has an abysmal record on foreign policy and a report card replete with failures. As senator, Clinton voted to authorize President Bush to attack and invade a nation, Iraq, that had not attacked us and did not want war with us. Clinton calls it her biggest mistake, another way of saying that the most important vote she ever cast proved disastrous for her country, costing 4,500 U.S. dead and a trillion dollars. (Read more.)