Tea at Trianon: Cuba's New Constitution

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, March 6, 2019

Cuba's New Constitution

It's just as bad as the old one. From USA Today:

Maybe you heard: Communist Cuba is on the road to freedom. That’s what Cuba’s rulers want you to think after the Cuban people overwhelmingly approved a new constitution on Sunday. But the opposite is true. Cuba’s rulers have only cemented their control, and the Cuban people are no closer to freedom today. Just look at the process that created this new constitution, which was anything but democratic. It began last summer when the National Assembly established a commission to draft the text. The Assembly claims to represent the Cuban people, but its most recent election fielded a party-approved candidate in each of its 612 races. The electorate could only vote yes or no. Every Communist candidate won. As for the commission, it consisted of 33 hardline Communist loyalists, chaired by none other than First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Raul Castro. Its only goal was to safeguard the tyrannical one-party state, which it accomplished by drafting a charter that makes socialism in Cuba “irrevocable.” (Read more.)