Tea at Trianon: American Myths in Black and White

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

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

American Myths in Black and White

From American Greatness:

“Myth,” the folk memories of a people, are more real, indeed, and more important than history. This is not to say myths are entirely untrue. The most powerful myths are the ones with some truth to them. Myths codify the symbols, icons, and legends of a people. Thus a people’s myths tell them who they are and where they come from, giving them a sense of identity, purpose, and destiny. In 1925, for example, Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos articulated the ideology of “La raza cósmica.” He wove an elaborate theory of a “fifth” and universal race sprung from the ethnically and racially sundry soil of Latin America in a deliberate effort to boost the morale of what he saw as a “depressed race.”

But mythmaking is a double-edged sword. The stories we tell can build a people up or deconstruct them. Whites, in America and elsewhere in the West, are privileged only with the latter. (Read more.)