Tea at Trianon: Europe's Dark Hour

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, August 18, 2016

Europe's Dark Hour

From Chronicles:

To his credit, Herr Spahn at least admits—in referring to “what would come upon us”—that some kind of problem exists. Not so Germany’s ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. Talking to the BBC in the immediate aftermath of a series of deadly attacks by Muslims in Germany last month, which had seen 15 people killed in eight days, H.E. Dr Peter Ammon claimed that the 1.1 people that came to Germany last year have tried hard to integrate: “We see signs of gratitude, we see signs that these people are making their best effort to integrate and of course it is costly. It takes a lot of time and effort but it is working.”

“Signs of gratitude”? Dr. Ammon is deluded and evil in equal measure, but the evil side now prevails. He claims that being grateful to the infidel for any act of kindness—opening the gates of one’s continent to the self-assertive multitudes—is a Muslim trait, but he knows that it is not. Yet he continues lying on a Clintonesque scale. His head will be chopped off with equal zeal and pleasure as that of his less self-hating compatriots. Dr. Ammon does not know, or (far more likely) knows full well but does not care – because he lives in a different world – that far from being “grateful,” Muslim invaders heartily despise Germany and the Germans for being such supine, unmanly, rapable suckers. What exactly is “working”? The inability of unaccompanied young German women to visit public spaces and facilities, such as railway stations, without fear of being gang-raped by wolfpacks of Muslim youths, is certainly working. Nothing else is.

Dr. Ammon further insisted the attacks had nothing to do with terrorism, and that mental health issues were currently the real concern in Germany: “The debate in Germany is not about migrants or even Islam, it is a debate about the growing incidents of mental illnesses among young people . . . [I]f we look at the background of the people who perpetrated these crimes, we see a huge difference so it’s quite clear that in one or two cases we had to deal with people with who are mentally ill. They are not connected to the ongoing debate on terror. These are very different cases.” Thanks to the good Ambassador now we know. That the attackers were all Muslims screaming Allahu akbar!, and in 75% of the cases recent arrivals, is irrelevant. Suggesting a link with Islam, migrants, or terrorism is wrong (actually polizeilich verboten). And his suggestion that “the debate” is what he says it is displays a mix of totalitarian propensity for thought control and wishful thinking. It is on par with a Soviet apparatchik claiming, in 1937, that the “debate” in Moscow is whether the traitors condemned by Vyshinsky is whether they should be shot or hanged. (Read more.)