Tea at Trianon: There Is Hope

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

Saturday, September 29, 2018

There Is Hope

From The American Spectator:

Melania, do not be intimidated by the many books about fascism that somehow manage to bring your husband into it, or they bring him into their tirades about environmental catastrophe or more recently about plastic straws. Remember the huge crowds that still turn out for his amusing speeches, and forget not that woman I met in New Jersey who proudly named her kitty Melania. If people like her turn out at the polls this November your husband will continue his Americanization of America, which means that prosperity will continue to spread. The national security will be enhanced, and The Political Party That Is Never Wrong will remain out of power and, of course, Wrong. They and their followers will continue to read ill-informed books about their political fantasies. They will warn us about thugs who wore Brown Shirts or Black Shirts in faraway countries long ago even as their more dedicated activists such as James Hodgkinson open fire on Republican congressmen and almost kill Steve Scalise.

It is amazing how far The Political Party That Is Never Wrong has veered from what were once sensible political norms. Those norms remain the norms of the Republican Party. For the Democratic Party — the party of rising socialism and $3,500 ensembles (that is the way Ms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democrats’ New Hope, attired herself recently for a photo shoot) — such norms are passé. (Read more.)