Tea at Trianon: Can't We Slow Down the News?

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

Friday, July 7, 2017

Can't We Slow Down the News?

From TFP:

That is why the breakdown of intermediary institutions like the family and community is so harmful. It leaves so many without points of reference. In fact, the only point of the reference is the individual who becomes the sole mediator of the news being received. It pits the individual against the world, calling to mind Thomas Hobbes’ “war of every man against every man.” Thus, each one of us feels flooded by the news of the whole world upon us. News becomes a mishmash of everything at the same time. The priorities are all mixed up, and the intermediary bodies no longer serve to moderate, validate and verify that which is received. News quickly becomes fast and fake. (Read more.)