Tea at Trianon: Marx's Legacy Is Anti-Intellectualism

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

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Marx's Legacy Is Anti-Intellectualism

We can see the Marxist legacy in those who prefer to call names rather than engage in rational debate. From the Foundation for Economic Education:

You get the idea. Accusation is a convenient substitute for thought....As Ludwig von Mises put it in Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis regarding Marxian interpretations of history and intellectual processes, “The enemy is not refuted: enough to unmask him as a bourgeois.” Mises devotes large chunks of an entire short volume – titled Marxism Unmasked – to the discussion and dissection of Marxian methods, argument, and analysis. Confront one who disagrees. Slander him as a bourgeois or as a mere defender of bourgeois class interests. Use this as a pretext for rejecting his ideas wholesale. Move on to the next step in the revolution, contradicting theory and evidence be damned. (Read more.)