Tea at Trianon: The Duty to Dissent

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, April 6, 2021

The Duty to Dissent

From American Greatness:

As first reported exclusively by The Hill and subsequently by the Federalist, the poll of 1,945 registered voters was conducted between March 24-25 by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies in conjunction with Harris Insights and Analytics.

As quoted in The Hill, while not amazed and enraged exactly, Mark Penn, director of the survey, was surprised and scared:

It is a chilling finding that most people in the country now are afraid they would be fired if they expressed their real views on social media. The public generally gives negative ratings to social media companies and sees the movement as more about censorship rather than trying to correct wrongs. It is growing as a national issue.

The findings should give everyone pause—especially the 36 percent of Americans who don’t believe cancel culture is a threat. They are likely the ones using cancel culture as a cudgel against their fellow citizens. They are playing with fire and are destined to get burned.

Yet, blinded by their totalitarian ideology, they’ll never believe this lesson of history until they, too, are consumed by it. Unfortunately, many more innocents will be reduced to ashes along with them.

From antiquity onward, in every society where its sundry forms have appeared and metastasized, the cancel culture runs its ineluctable course. Corrupt elites capriciously exert their power to censor, coerce, and condemn dissenters and, finally, each other in a vain attempt to perpetuate their power, wealth, and status. (Read more.)