Tea at Trianon: A Shadow Government

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

Thursday, January 23, 2020

A Shadow Government

From Victor Davis Hanson The National Review:

All those Marquess of Queensberry Rules of post-presidential decorum abruptly ended in 2017. What superseded them was, at best, a kind of British-style, European shadow government, in which mostly ex-Obama officials became nonstop activist critics of almost everything Trump has done.

At worst, the endless opposition turned into a slow-motion sort of coup in which progressive, life-tenured bureaucrats leaked, obstructed, and connived to stop the daily operations of the administration — as they often proudly admitted to the media. The subtext was that the Obama-progressive-media complex would create enough momentum to abort Trump’s first term. Or was it that Trump represented such an existential danger to the administrative-state way of doing business that any means necessary were justified to end his presidency?

The locus classicus was Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national-security adviser, and Jack Sullivan, who had been Obama’s White House deputy assistant. Together, they formed the National Security Action organization in early 2018. The two promised that they would offer an “effective, strategic, relentless, and national response to this administration’s dangerous approach to national security.” Translated, that meant that Rhodes and Sullivan would aggregate former Obama officials and progressive analysts to launch nonstop attacks on all of Trump’s foreign-policy efforts. And they have. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: In time they will see that they have only harmed themselves and our Country, not Donald Trump personally. He will go on through bad and good as he has throughout his entire lifetime...For yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I am the smartest son of a bitch in the valley...; January 23, 2020 at 11:44:00 AM EST