Tea at Trianon: Narrative Shattered

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, August 25, 2021

Narrative Shattered

From Mike Huckabee:

According to officials quoted in the Reuters report, the FBI “at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump." It has also “so far found no evidence that [Trump] or people directly around him were involved in organizing the violence.” Up to 95% of the cases are “one-offs” (i.e., someone saw the door open and wandered in.) Maybe five percent involved organized groups like Oath Keepers or Proud Boys who allegedly had planned to break in, but “they found no evidence that the groups had serious plans about what to do if they made it inside.”

This is why most of the charges have been things like “conspiracy” instead of really serious counts like racketeering or insurrection: because there’s no evidence of any broader plot than that they talked in advance about their plans to trespass.

It kind of throws a monkey wrench into all the Democrat histrionics about it being the biggest threat to the federal government since the Civil War. Say what you will about the over-matched and out-gunned Confederates, but at least they didn’t show up at Gettysburg unarmed, wearing T-shirts and Viking helmets and shooting nothing but selfies. (Read more.)