Tea at Trianon: 'Racist!' Is Not An Argument

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, January 31, 2019

'Racist!' Is Not An Argument

From Andrew Klavan:

Whenever I hear the left dealing in insults rather than arguments, I am reminded of how many of their little experiments in transforming reality have resulted in catastrophe. The 100 million murders of Soviet and Chinese Communism. The enslavement of Socialist North Korea and the destruction of Socialist Venezuela. The increase in crime and terrorism brought on by massive Islamic immigration in Europe. Not to mention more subtle disasters like the way universal healthcare retards medical research, or the way some welfare programs destroy families and lead to dependency. This, in turn, makes me wonder if the reason the left is always screaming about racism — and sexism and homophobia and the rest — instead of making rational arguments is because they have no rational arguments at all. (Read more.)