Tea at Trianon: Sanders and the Soviets

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

Sunday, March 8, 2020

Sanders and the Soviets

From The National Review:

Soviet officials used then-mayor Bernie Sanders’s attempts to establish a sister-city relationship with Yaroslavl, Russia as propaganda to “reveal American imperialism as the main source of the danger of war,” according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. As mayor of Burlington, Vt., Sanders was only one of several dozen mayors who already had or were applying to establish a relationship with a Soviet sister city at the time, in an effort to deescalate a possible nuclear conflict amid the tensions of the Cold War. (Read more.)

From The Tennessee Star:

Instead of working, Sanders was dreaming of nationalizing vast segments of American industry. In his 1992 book, Recapturing the Spirit of Enterprise, economist and futurist George Gilder explained that greed is an appetite for “unearned wealth and power.” By Gilder’s definition Sanders is exceedingly greedy:

The truly greedy seek… goods and clout they have not earned. Because the best and safest way to gain unearned pay is government action to take it from others, greed leads as by an invisible hand toward ever more government action — to socialism, not capitalism. Socialism is simply the conspiracy of the greedy to exploit the productive.
Worse, Gilder observes, “To confuse the issue, the greedy smear their betters with the claim of avarice that they themselves deserve.”

Today, Sanders threatens those he condemns as greedy. He promises to confiscate a significant part of the wealth of billionaires. In Sanders’s ideal world, billionaires wouldn’t exist. In his ongoing war with Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos, Sanders is a hanging judge, set in his thinking that Bezos and other entrepreneurs like him are greedy. The taxes Sanders would force Amazon and Bezos to pay would, in part, support those with an appetite for unearned pay or a lifestyle like Sanders lived while in his 20s and 30s. (Read more.)