Tea at Trianon: Being Hated

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

Monday, May 6, 2019

Being Hated

From Townhall:

How about abortion? The Democrats all want to expand your right to have an abortion pretty much up until the time the victim – I mean “the parasitic clump of cells” – can buy a pack of Marlboros and a sixer of Michelob. But that won’t increase my liberty. I will never have an abortion. That’s partly because men can’t get preggers, despite the insistence of the folks who love to tell you how much they love #science, so broadening my options vis a vis wasting babies will not increase my liberty even if I were so inclined. Nor will it expand yours, because it’s a pretty safe bet that if you have read this far you are unlikely to waddle down to the local “womens’ healthcare provider” to get some terminal “health care” provided for your 8.5-month-old pregnancy. (Read more.)