Tea at Trianon: The Hitler of Our Time

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, August 1, 2016

The Hitler of Our Time

From Ellis Washington:

Much like Stalin used the long-arm of the Soviet Union to execute his hated rival Trotsky who was hiding in Mexico, Aug. 21, 1940, Erdogan desperately wants Gulen to be repatriated back to Turkey to torture and execute him before the people of Turkey, but the Obama administration officials so far disagree, demanding that Turkey must present legally verifiable evidence of crimes committed by Gulen before they will agree to deport him back to Turkey. Of course Erdogan has no evidence of crimes committed by Gulen—tyrants operate by Robespierre’s aphorism of expediency—There are no crimes, only criminals. Erdogan’s paranoia which imprisoned the 58,000 police, judges, clerics and social workers claim that they were all involved in a grand conspiracy against him operated by Gulen while living in the mountains of Pennsylvania. You couldn’t write a better movie script than this. To Erdogan, free speech is terrorism. (Read more.)

And some insights from Chronicles:

Two weeks after the failed coup and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s subsequent mass purge, three facts seem clear. Turkey has ceased to be a democracy in any conventional sense. The army’s reputation and cohesiveness have suffered a massive blow, with uncertain consequences for its operational effectiveness. Most importantly, Turkey’s foreign policy and regional security strategy will become more difficult to predict and less amenable to Western interests.

The military that has long served as a trusted unifying force for the country is deeply divided, diminished and discredited. Hundreds of its senior officers are under arrest. Almost 1,700 have been dishonorably discharged, including 40 percent of all active-service generals and admirals. That once staunchly Kemalist army, which had been for nine decades one of the key institutions of the Turkish state and society, is gone. It is likely to emerge from the purge as a pliant instrument under Erdogan’s direct control—a hundred reliable colonels have already been promoted to generals—and not a suprapolitical institution accountable to the prime minister’s office as before. This change requires a constitutional amendment, which may well pave the way for the new constitution which would grant Erdogan unprecedented executive powers. (Read more.)