Tea at Trianon: A Revolution to Always Remember but Never Celebrate

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, October 31, 2017

A Revolution to Always Remember but Never Celebrate

From the Foundation for Economic Education:

The propaganda of the old Soviet Union referred to it for decades as the “Great October Socialist Revolution,” the momentous event that brought Vladimir Lenin to power and gave birth to seventy-four years of Communist Party rule. We are presently on the eve of its centennial. It is not an anniversary that anyone should celebrate.

For decent people everywhere, nothing about the Russian tragedy of 1917 is worth commemorating. Everything about it, however, is worth remembering—and learning important lessons from. The carnage wrought by the ideology that ascended to power a century ago may forever stand as an evil unsurpassed in the annals of human depravity. If you’re not sure just what that ideology was, or what to call it, perhaps this article will help.

I first became an activist for liberty 49 years ago, in response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. So in part for personal reasons, I could not let this centennial milestone pass without noting it in some way.

The victims of the Soviet regime and the other tyrannies it spawned in the 20th Century approach 100 million in number, but can any article, book, or voluminous collection of both ever adequately do justice to the stories of their agony and sacrifice? Of course not. So with that limitation in mind, I choose to note the occasion by telling you a little about just two of those 100 million. Their names are Gareth Jones and Boris Kornfeld. (Read more.)