Tea at Trianon: America's Latest Suicide Attempt

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

Friday, August 28, 2020

America's Latest Suicide Attempt

From Real Clear History:

During the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) administrations, U.S. involvement in Vietnam expanded, but both leaders recoiled from doing what was necessary to win the war. “Having involved itself,” historian Johnson wrote, “America should have followed the logic of its position and responded to aggression by occupying . . . North [Vietnam].” Instead, North Vietnam, as well as Laos and Cambodia became, for the most part, privileged sanctuaries for our enemies, largely immune from the full force of American arms and power. This self-imposed restraint, Johnson explained, was “interpreted by friend and foe alike as evidence, not of humanity, but of guilt and lack of righteous conviction.”

At home, the mostly privileged student Left took to the streets in radical protest not just against the war, but also against American society in general. Some students called for overthrowing the “system.” Campuses were “radicalized” and students rioted, Johnson wrote, while “university presidents compromised, surrendered or abdicated.” “What student violence did above all,” Johnson explained, “was to damage American higher education and demoralize its teachers.”

Meanwhile, LBJ’s “Great Society” programs that were designed to end poverty and establish racial justice led to widespread dependence on the federal government and produced what historian Johnson called “a huge and increasingly militant civil-rights movement” that abandoned the proclaimed goal of Martin Luther King, Jr. for a colorblind society. Racially motivated rioting broke out in many places. Much to the liberals’ chagrin, Johnson noted, “the scale and intensity of black violence, especially in the big cities outside the South, advanced step by step with . . . vigorous and effective efforts to secure black rights.” (Read more.)