Tea at Trianon: When Society Falls Apart

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, September 26, 2018

When Society Falls Apart

From TFP:

A battle rages around liberalism’s future. Conservatives blame progressives for this disaster with the tyranny of their stifling political correctness and their obsessive demands for big government. Progressives blame conservatives claiming they represent big financial interests and promote rigid notions of identity and freedom. They do not hesitate to frame the debate in class struggle terms of powerful conservative parties who impose their vision of society on the people especially at the expense of supposedly disenfranchised minorities.

The New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman, for example, recently complained that conservatives are suppressing the liberal order in favor of a new and sinister “illiberal” order that ignores the rule of law and basic freedoms. “It [nationalist tyranny] can happen here,” he ominously warned. What progressives like Krugman fail to mention is that they have played an important role in suppressing the liberal order. Their big government policies and support of the sexual revolution have reduced society to shreds. When society falls apart, it [socialist tyranny] can happen anywhere. (Read more.)