Tea at Trianon: The Emancipation of Texas

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

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

The Emancipation of Texas

From AIER:

There’s a deep culture of loving freedom in Texas, and with that comes a baked-in habit of civility. Texas has perfected hospitality, and the art of the smile. As for facemasks, those are for bandits and bank robbers, people who hide their identities because they mean you harm. The idea of the whole population masking up is inimical to what the state is all about. Forcing people to stay in their homes conflicts with the whole history of a people whose home is on the range and the gigantic skies serve as not only nature’s ceiling but a passageway to the eternal.

This is why I was shocked when Texas shut down due to the advent of the coronavirus in 2020. The deep heritage of this state has faced far more severe threats and they did so while never giving up their rights. It’s the last place I would have expected the citizenry to tolerate despotism in the name of safety. But it happened. And it happened because the governor lost courage. He chose control over liberty, cowardice over courage, imposition over trust. And the state suffered terribly as a result.

Last I visited my mother’s town, it was in shambles. A third of businesses were closed. The people were sad. People were afraid even to go to the doctor, for fear of the virus but also the fear of being ostracized and isolated when testing positive. Her church was basically destroyed, the choir disbanded and most of the staff fired, as people were locked out and then stopped attending because they were fed up with the masks and the ridiculous strictures around “social distancing.” The freedoms they had taken for granted, ever since the great battles for Texas independence, were taken away.

Feeling enormous political pressure, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas finally issued a sweeping proclamation that repeals the whole of his virus-mitigation measures that he issued on March 19, 2020. They are all gone. One fell swoop, and Texas is now fully open. That includes the mask mandate and all capacity limits.

Abbott offered various lame excuses concerning cases and vaccines and so on, but it is impossible to miss that this looks and feels like a wholesale repudiation of the entire lockdown agenda. It was a big mistake. He knows it. Most everyone in Texas knows it.

How does one do something so awful to the formerly free Texas and dial it back while saving face? You claim that conditions have changed. “It is clear from the recoveries, vaccinations, reduced hospitalizations and safe practices that Texans are using that state mandates are no longer needed.”

No longer needed? They never were. (Read more.)