Tea at Trianon: Democratic Party Racism

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, August 8, 2021

Democratic Party Racism

From Real Clear Investigations:

At a time when governments, sports teams, schools and other bastions of American society are rushing to expunge legacies of slavery or racism, this was another instance of the Democratic Party’s failure to acknowledge that it did more than any other institution in American life to preserve the “peculiar institution” -- and later enforce Jim Crow-style apartheid in the Old South.

“I think it's absolutely fair to criticize the history of the Democrat Party when we're literally changing the names of birds because they're named after racists,” said Jarrett Stepman, author of “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past,” referring to a new racism-cleansing push in, yes, ornithology.
Democrats’ circumspection in the face of this trend is especially noteworthy because it comes at a time when they are criticizing Republican legislation to block the teaching of critical race theory on the ground that the GOP wants to whitewash American history. But one of the most noteworthy efforts to reframe American history in terms of race, the New York Times’ 1619 Project, virtually ignores the Democrat Party’s role in advancing and sustaining racism in the United States.

Named after the year slaves from Africa were first brought to North America, the curated collection of essays on race in America presents even the most complex modern issues – from obesity and traffic jams to capitalism itself – as being primarily a consequence of America’s history of slavery and racial injustice. The 1619 Project has been widely adopted as an historical framework on the left despite criticism from eminent historians, being repudiated by the 1619 Project’s own fact-checkers, and mangling basic facts. (Read more.)