Tea at Trianon: Next: Banning Our Founding Fathers?

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, August 18, 2017

Next: Banning Our Founding Fathers?

From The Federalist Papers:

This is an incredibly slippery slope. All of America’s Founding Fathers were imperfect men. Most were slave-owners, and I have no doubt others were genuine scoundrels. But we owe them a debt of gratitude no matter what sins they may have committed. As Jay Cost writes: “If I contract somebody to paint my house, and I find out later that he is an adulterer, does that excuse me from paying what I owe? Of course not. By the same token, my debt for the painting does not oblige me to act as though he did not wrong his spouse.”

So it goes with the Founders who owned slaves: We should appreciate them for their endeavors, for our lives are manifestly better because of their struggles, but honoring them does not require us to ignore or excuse their errors. Madison’s home Montpelier, for example, just opened an exhibition, “The Mere Distinction of Colour,” exploring slavery at the plantation.
Wiping out America’s history because there are parts of it that are unsettling or unappealing is a leftist way of trying to re-write what this country was founded upon. If you can depict America’s founders as malevolent, evil men, you can paint the entire nation that way. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: It is all part of creating guilt and destroying the sense of Nationalism for our great country. Obama gave the radical Left carte blanch to do this. We have all failed in many ways, personally and as a country, that is part of the human condition, but we must move ahead and be better for it. It does not accomplish anything positive to consequently subject the collective thinking to past discretions and wrong choices made by our ancestors. Even victims victimize others.; August 18, 2017 at 10:05:00 AM EDT