Tea at Trianon: The Pages Of George Orwell’s 1984 Are Coming To Life

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, October 16, 2019

The Pages Of George Orwell’s 1984 Are Coming To Life

From The Daily Wire:

Speaking in Nashville, Pompeo said the Trump administration “has spoken to the truth in many ways that previous administrations haven’t done,” such as calling out “China’s rule-breaking and authoritarianism” and Iran’s bogus victimhood claims. It was his remarks about China that have received the most attention, given the controversy surrounding the partially communist country and the NBA.

“The Chinese Communist Party is detaining and abusing more than one million Uighur Muslims in internment camps in the Xinjiang. It’s the western region of China,” Pompeo said. “The pages of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ are coming to life there. I wish the NBA would acknowledge that.” Pompeo went on to explain that Christians are also being persecuted in the Middle East:

So Christian pastors today are being unlawfully arrested, beaten, detained inside the Islamic Republic of Iran. We need to speak about this. Christian areas in northern Iraq that I’ve had the privilege to visit have been ravaged by ISIS, part of a greater trend of Christian persecution all across the Middle East.
Pompeo emphasized the Trump administration’s position that nations should give individuals “their basic human dignity to practice their conscience, their faith, or to choose no faith if they so choose all around the world.” (Read more.)