Tea at Trianon: Dead Americans

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 31, 2018

Dead Americans

From Townhall:

I have to start by saying I hate it when tragedies are politicized, no matter who does it. With that being said, the two parties do use horrible events differently. Republicans use them to highlight issues of importance; Democrats use them to advance agenda items they’d been wanting to push for years, even when they admit their solutions would not have prevented the tragedy they’re exploiting. It may not seem like much, but it is, and it is an important difference.

After every mass shooting, for example, Democrats reach in their desk drawers and pull out their standard gun control wish list. Buzzwords like “background checks,” “gun show loopholes,” and all the words we’ve come to hear far too often hit the cable news airwaves along with the inevitable “we must do somethings” that accompany them. Yet after each of these horrible events this ballet plays out with the ultimate reality that none of these proposed “solutions” would have prevented what they are allegedly in reaction to admitted by its advocates.

So why propose a response to something that not only would not have prevented the tragedy, but would also do nothing to prevent a similar event in the future? Because Democrats want to, ultimately, repeal the Second Amendment. They know they can’t do it all at once; incrementalism has always been the left’s tactic. If they have to exploit a tragedy to move the ball in their direction, they are more than happy to do it. (Read more.)