Tea at Trianon: ‘Civil Rights’ And Totalitarianism

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, February 3, 2020

‘Civil Rights’ And Totalitarianism

From Rod Dreher at The American Conservative:

Rauch is not wrong in his description of the most controversial part of Caldwell’s book. Caldwell really does see the Civil Rights regime as where things went badly wrong. But Rauch, in my view, doesn’t take on Caldwell’s actual argument, but only asserts that these conflicts “can be worked through.” Boy, is that ever whistling past the graveyard. However, I have to admit that I never would have read a book that claimed the Civil Rights movement went wrong had it not been written by someone I respect as much as I do Christopher Caldwell. I read the book last week, and I’m glad I did, though I doubt I will read a more unsettling book all year.

Why? Because I can’t see where Caldwell’s reasoning is wrong, and with the Democrats and other progressives sacralizing left-wing identity politics by vesting them in the sacred mantle of the Civil Rights movement — kryptonite in US politics — I see no way out of this. Rauch is right: civil rights laws will not be repealed. They are being used now to dispossess anyone and everyone who stands in the way of the progressive juggernaut. (Read more.)