Tea at Trianon: America's First Third World State

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, June 19, 2019

America's First Third World State

From The Daily Caller:

Responding to host Tucker Carlson’s question about why he considers California a “Third World state,” Hanson pointed to “symptoms” we typically “associate with failed states” such as high taxes, poor schools, a super-rich class, and a significant percentage of its people below the poverty line.

“We have the most billionaires of any state in nation and then we have the largest underclass,” he said, blaming in part the overturning of the “very popular” Proposition 187, which would have denied non-emergency healthcare to illegal immigrants.

“That was unfortunately part of a perfect storm,” said Hanson, describing the millions of people who chose to move elsewhere over the next two decades. Hanson then described the growth of “a very small but influential and wealthy manorial class” in Silicon Valley.

“We’ve created a very a wealthy class that doesn’t mind high taxes because it has ways it can navigate around that and poor social circumstances,” he said. “And the people in between are sort of like peasants outside a medieval keep that can’t survive, and so they drift off. We are left with a sort of romanticized indigent class and the royal elite that doesn’t care about the vanishing middle class at all.” (Read more.)