Tea at Trianon: Death of a Nation

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

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Death of a Nation

From American Thinker:

Unsurprisingly, Dinesh D'Souza's film Death of a Nation has made the loud voices on the left stark raving mad. A perfect example is the film review website Rotten Tomatoes. The eleven critics gave the film a zero. The voting audience gave it 90% approval. The same is true at all the typically left-wing sites that review films.

The Hollywood Reporter reviewer, Frank Scheck, was apoplectic. He does not bother to provide any countervailing facts. He cannot. D'Souza's history is accurate. But reviewers like Scheck are so committed to the lies they have been taught in college, or maybe J-school, for forty years that they leap to histrionic attacks on the film before bothering to do any research. The hysterical reaction to this film by the left is yet another sad commentary on the state of American education. The film is thoughtful and balanced. Unlike privileged film reviewers like Scheck, D'Souza, an immigrant from India, sees so clearly what is great about America. He is grateful that it is his country now. (Read more.)