Tea at Trianon: Trump-Churchill Comparison

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

Monday, August 30, 2021

Trump-Churchill Comparison

From Jeffrey Lord:

Trump’s spokeswoman ridiculed for calling him ‘the new Churchill’ in tweet of magazine article: ‘Those two words should not even be in the same sentence’

What followed, predictably, was tweet after tweet that exhibited nothing but blissful ignorance of Churchill, all prompted by the all-too-predictable loathing of Trump haters.

Of course, the tweeters showed absolutely no realization that in the day Winston Churchill, like Donald Trump today, was a figure of immense controversy. He had been tossed out as First Lord of the Admiralty for his role in the Dardanelles disaster, in which the Allies of World War I had sought to take out Turkey. In fact, Churchill’s strategy was spot on – but the execution of the plan by a British admiral was the problem and it turned into a route with tens of thousands of British casualties. Churchill was blamed -wrongly – and thought his career over.

Over time he began to come back, but now with a permanent reputation as brilliant but erratic, unreliable and more. His stance in opposing India’s independence hurt him even more. Thus when he began, in laser-like fashion, to zero in on the threat from Germany and Adolph Hitler he was completely ignored. Even when it became crystal clear that his sharp criticism of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler was correct, there were still members of his Conservative party who opposed his becoming prime minister. They were the British version of the “RINO’s” (Republicans In Name Only) that Trump regularly attacks.

What all of these tweeters miss is that it is precisely that willingness to “never give up” (as Churchill put it) that made Churchill a great leader. Nobody has understood the massive problems that a Biden presidency would produce better than Donald Trump. Nobody. Biden has as predicted turned out to be the Neville Chamberlain of our day- and Trump spotted this early on and has repeatedly, in Churchillian style, said so. (Read more.)