Tea at Trianon: Now It's Woodrow Wilson's Turn

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, July 19, 2020

Now It's Woodrow Wilson's Turn

I personally have no use for Wilson but the current purge is positively Stalinist. From PJB at Chronicles:

Now that statues of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, and Theodore Roosevelt have been desecrated, vandalized, toppled, and smashed, it appears Woodrow Wilson's time has come. The cultural revolution has come to the Ivy League. Though Wilson attended Princeton as an undergraduate, taught there, and served from 1902 to 1910 as president, his name is to be removed from Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs.

And why is this icon of American liberals to be so dishonored? Because Thomas Woodrow Wilson disbelieved in racial equality. Says Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber: "Wilson's racist opinions and policies make him an inappropriate namesake." Moreover, Wilson's "racism was significant and consequential even by the standards of his own time."

And what exactly were Wilson's sins? "Wilson was... a racist," writes Eisgruber, who "discouraged black applicants from applying to Princeton. While president of the United States he segregated the previously integrated civil service." Another of Wilson's crimes was overlooked by Eisgruber. In February 1915, following a White House screening of Birth of a Nation, which depicted the Ku Klux Klan as heroic defenders of white womanhood in the South after the Civil War, a stunned Wilson said: "It's like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true."

Princeton's board of trustees has endorsed Eisgruber's capitulation, declaring that Woodrow Wilson's "racist thinking and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school or college whose scholars, students, and alumni must stand firmly against racism in all its forms." Yet, as Wilson left the U.S. presidency a century ago and has been dead for 96 years, one wonders: Was Princeton unaware that Wilson had re-segregated the civil service? When did Princeton discover this? (Read more.)

How to conquer cancel culture. From The Stream:

The concept is simple. The more people try to silence you, the louder you speak. The more they try to shut you up, the louder you shout. The more doors they shut in your face, the more you open. You use the attempts to silence you as the platform on which you stand. But you don’t do this as a victim. You do it as someone who is unfettered, who will not be muzzled, who is emboldened by the opposition. Feed off of the attacks that come against you just as a fire feeds on wood. The cancel culture will help you get your message out. (Read more.)

From Tammy Bruce at Fox News:

Americans have been sold the lie that a sliver of your identity is what matters, and that the Democratic machine will represent and protect you. Ask the people of Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Seattle, Portland and Baltimore how that’s working out for them. Identity politics is sold as philosophy of personal elevation and power, but in reality it’s about control, punishment and destruction. Ultimately, it is the brainwashing and destruction that enforces a code of complete conformity lest you are expelled and cancelled. This is the real agenda of the left — control people with threat so questions, debate, independent thought and genuine inquiry into facts are too dangerous to even consider. It is the only way violent fascists are able to take, and keep, control of Americans cities without fear of confrontation. (Read more.)