Tea at Trianon: An Uneducated Lout?

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, August 10, 2016

An Uneducated Lout?

From Chronicles:

If Mr. Pruden finds the prospect of Donald Trump’s victory terrifying; I do not. There can be no more positive agenda for the nation than border security, a markedly less interventionist foreign policy, and an end to the fast-track trade deals that have gutted our national economy. Moreover, he is wrong to call Trump an “uneducated lout.” Trump is educated and is far from being a lout, although he can be brusque. I do not see how you can be an uneducated lout and yet create a billion-dollar company, generate thousands of jobs, graduate from the nation’s leading business school (Wharton in Philadelphia), successfully switch careers from real estate to prime-time television, win the Republican Party’s nomination for president (handily) against its “deep bench” of sixteen candidates, and now stand on the threshold of ascending to the highest office in the land. I wish my parents had raised me to be an uneducated lout, but somehow they went wrong. (Read more.)