Tea at Trianon: Death of the WASP Elite

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

Thursday, December 6, 2018

Death of the WASP Elite

Personally, I do not care about background, gender and, least of all, skin color. I care about competency. From The New Republic:

Douthat’s article makes little sense as history. It’s true that the American elite is slightly more diverse than it was when George H. W. Bush went to Yale in the 1940s, but that change has only been at the margins. Bush’s own career (the son of Senator who became both president and the father of another president) shows that WASP power is alive and well. Members of the Bush family still occupy positions of power, as detailed in coverage of their patriarch’s funeral.

The term WASP—standing for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant—is a bit anachronistic, since white Catholics are now very assimilated into white culture. If we recognize that white Catholics are now equal partners in WASP culture, then America remains a land overwhelming ruled by WASPs. (Read more.)