Tea at Trianon: The Unsilent Coup

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

Thursday, December 28, 2017

The Unsilent Coup

From The American Spectator:

Much of the media’s energy is devoted to calling for a de facto coup. The premise of practically every story, from the travel ban to the most basic executive appointments, is that it is somehow “controversial” for a duly elected president to use the powers vested in the executive branch. Trump is apparently not to hire or fire anybody, should never tell executive agencies what to do, should take, not give, orders from diplomats and bureaucrats, should submit to all acts of judicial activism, must never criticize Congress, and should in general stop offering any opinions at all. All of this is deemed “unpresidential” and “scandalous” by the media.

It is comic the lengths to which the media will go to try to mau-mau a Republican president into passivity while seeking to maximize the power of unelected officials. The more undemocratic the figure (provided he is liberal), the more the media demands that his power go unchecked. The media loves bureaucrats, regulators, career diplomats, unelected judges, and other assorted “experts.” They wear the white hats in almost all of the media’s stories while elected officials wear the black ones. This week, for example, the New York Times decreed it a scandal of “censorship” that Trump is pulling the plug on propaganda at the Centers for Disease Control. The head of the executive branch controlling his own executive agencies is cast by the Times as sinister — a “continuing effort to mute, censor, and spy on employees in federal agencies whose words or views don’t sync with President Trump’s agenda.” How dare Trump not let unelected policy analysts treat the CDC like their own personal think tank — that’s the upshot of the complaint. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: So many are unable to grasp that currently the office of the Presidency is not being run in the usual way by men who were lawyers, governors, senators, but by an executive from the private sector of this country. Because of that his agenda and his method of moving his agenda forward is unlike any other previous President.; December 28, 2017 at 6:20:00 PM EST