Tea at Trianon: A Party of Stalkers

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

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

A Party of Stalkers

From The National Review:

The Democrats in 2018 seem to have taken the wrong lesson from Hodgkinson and the rest: They have embraced stalking and terror as political tactics. The so-called antifa have firebombed college campuses and committed political violence in order to silence dissenting speakers and to bully students into political conformity; Democrats have taken up stalking with gusto, recently chasing Ted Cruz and his wife out of a restaurant, while Representative Dave Brat recently discovered stalkers photographing his cars and property; police cordons have been broken, and buildings have been entered illegally; Senator Susan Collins has been threatened with rape. Hillary Clinton told her gang: “You cannot be civil.” (Read more.)

Threats and more threats. From LifeZette:

Women’s March co-chair Tamika Mallory (pictured above left) wrote an angry op-ed published Friday in the Huffington Post, titled “White Women: Stop Waiting for Black Women to Save You.” Mallory, who in the past attended a rally led by the racist and anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan, began her piece with an attack on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), as The Daily Wire noted.

Addressing Collins’ Senate vote, which sealed Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s place on the nation’s highest court, Mallory wrote, “Last week, Sen. Susan Collins doubled down on white supremacy and patriarchy in America. Women and survivors of all genders will never forgive her for it. In a 43-minute speech last Friday, Collins managed to dismiss survivors, argue in favor of a man accused of sexual assault, and advance [President] Donald Trump’s white supremacist political agenda.”

Mallory used this as a stepping stone to blast all white women: “Like many people of color, on a gut level, I expected this outcome. We’ve seen the system (and white women) fail us over and over again.” (Read more.)

We must say "no" to mob violence. From The Federalist:

“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” Hillary Clinton recently explained, egging on one of those mobs. And it makes sense. If you allow politics to become a stand-in for religion, the apostates don’t deserve decency. “Civility can start again,” Clinton went on to helpfully inform us, when Democrats run the House.

Of course, it’s easy to embrace fake magnanimity when you hold power. Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” came during her 2016 speech at the Democratic National Convention, and it was aimed at Trumpian rhetoric when nearly everyone in power believed Clinton would triumph. She offered her axiom after liberals had spent eight years trying to use executive power to coerce, demean, and morally micromanage the deplorables—yet those clingy God-loving gun nuts stubbornly refused to accept the progressive reinvention of patriotism.

They went low all the time. It was Joe Biden, not Trump, who accused Republicans and their presidential candidate, a man who had dutifully engaged in civic life for quite some time, of “betting against America.” Yet Democrats still act perplexed by the backlash. Even now the mob within their ranks is being cast, predictably, as a conservative fiction. “Republicans Seize On ‘Angry Mob’ Mantra To Keep Their Midterm Base Fired Up,” says NPR, and so on. CNN insists that it’s a normal, everyday demonstration of free expression to chase politicians’ wives out of public places. You may not use the word “mob” in their presence. (Read more.)