Tea at Trianon: The Woodstock Illusion

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, August 21, 2019

The Woodstock Illusion

From TFP:

The myth of Woodstock claimed the event was all about a new age of freedom, love and peace. Without the restraints of Christian morals and social structures, people could “imagine” a perfect world and live together in harmony without property, authority and God. However, as in all utopic fantasies, reality crashes through the illusions. A Woodstock world is a nightmare. Indeed, without courtesy and propriety, society becomes full of friction and discord. When all is spontaneous and undefined, there can be no certainties and convictions. Where there is no restraint, the tyranny of unbridled passions rules.

Woodstock represented what America would eventually become—a broken and dysfunctional society. It shows what happens when “you do your own thing” without self-restraint. Thus, the logic of Woodstock makes the cancelation of its anniversary predictable. Woodstock 50 failed because a Woodstock society cannot function in the real world. The festival could not imagine itself into existence. In a do-your-own-thing world, Woodstock 50 suffered from the difficulty of generating interest beyond those things that absorb the individual lives of people. (Read more.)