Tea at Trianon: America’s Forgotten Immigrants

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

Sunday, September 23, 2018

America’s Forgotten Immigrants

Victims of Communism. From The National Review:

A red wave is coming to America’s shores. With the rise of politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Andrew Gillum, the future of the Democratic party is boldly and unapologetically socialist. The party of Harry Truman, FDR, and Bill Clinton is no longer, and the mainstream media has only fanned the flames, elevating young socialists as the brave new faces of the progressive movement. This troubling trend marks a new internal threat to our nation’s great experiment. And amid all this, the voices of a small subgroup of Americans — the victims of socialism — are being drowned out and sometimes even silenced.

A blatant example of this censorship can be seen with congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng of California’s 16th district, the daughter of Cambodian refugees. One of her campaign advertisements detailed her family’s background of surviving the Killing Fields. This advertisement was censored on both Facebook and Twitter, with Facebook stating the “campaign ad was deemed to violate the site’s advertising policy against content that “shocks or scares.” But what Heng’s ad contained should “shock and scare.” The socialist Khmer Rouge was brutal, murdering close to a quarter of the population in just four years.

Elizabeth is a young, Ivy League–educated woman of color who has an important story to tell. Americans across this nation should be heeding stories like Elizabeth’s because the failure to do so would mean the undermining of our nation’s core values.

Like Elizabeth, I too am the child of Cambodian refugees. When Pol Pot seized power in 1975, my father and his family were forced into labor camps. My father witnessed horrors unimaginable. Starvation, executions, and hard labor were commonplace. He witnessed his best friend, a boy of just eleven years old, beheaded for attempting to escape. He was forced to memorize revolutionary slogans and songs that called for the elimination of private property, the dissolution of the family unit, and the destruction of capitalism.

My father dreamed of freedom, of running west to Thailand. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia, he made his escape. With the threat of death if captured and his traveling limited to the cover of night, he navigated through mine-infested jungles to get to the refugee camps at the Thai border. His only guides through the jungle were the animals ahead of him; he carefully placed his steps where they had walked. Just one misstep could mean stepping on a landmine.

Arriving at the refugee camps, my father learned English from Christian missionaries. The church eventually sponsored him and his family to come to the United States. In America, he took advantage of the opportunities afforded to him and worked hard in school. Having no prior formal education, he went on to finish high school, earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics, and then earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in mathematics as well. He worked with NASA as a scientist on the space shuttle Endeavor and to this day works as a contracted civilian adviser to the Department of Defense.

His story is the type of story the Left wants to block out. He overcame socialism abroad to pursue a life and career that can only happen in America. Today, with the rise of domestic socialism, stories like my father’s and Elizabeth Heng’s parents’ need to be reiterated. And while Americans on both the Left and the Right have come to denounce the racism perpetuated by the alt-right and white-nationalists groups, the Left has failed to denounce the hateful rhetoric and connotations associated with emerging far-left groups. The Left’s failure to denounce socialism is a slap in the face to the many American immigrants who suffered under socialist regimes before escaping. (Read more.)