Tea at Trianon: Will vs Trump

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

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Will vs Trump

From Chronicles:

The news was spread far and wide last weekend that George F. Will is no longer registered as a Republican and is now politically “unaffiliated,” owing to the GOP’s acceptance (however grudging) of Donald Trump as its presidential nominee. “Far and wide” is probably a good deal further than the columnist’s reputation, or even name recognition, extends today.

A protégé of Irving Kristol’s (Kristol, the father of William, was one of the early neoconservatives) who was hired by William Buckley as National Review’s Washington and literary editor in the 1970s, Will was for a decade or two a minor celebrity in print and on television, the face of “rational,” “polite,” and “acceptable” conservatism. In private, he considered Buckley to be not a serious person. Will is nothing if not serious, which is why he is virtually a non-person four decades later. (“The opposite of funny,” Chesterton said, “is not serious, it’s ‘not funny.’”) Buckley, whatever his faults, was never priggish, a word that abundantly describes George Will. (Read more.)