Tea at Trianon: Backlash?

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, September 28, 2021

Backlash?

From The Brownstone Institute:

Increasingly, totalitarian Western governments would then coordinate with other totalitarian governments and with the large international corporations that dominate global flows of information and goods, making it hard for resistance groups to organise. The other causes used to excuse continued control could most obviously be carbon emissions, other diseases including new Covid variants, or the supposed threats posed by other countries.

On balance, competitive pressures between countries make this second scenario highly unlikely. Ambitious, fun-loving populations will flee from totalitarian places to other countries or states that are open for both business and fun. This type of voting with the feet has been a powerful force historically, and has already been observed in the Covid period, for example in the recent US migration from California and New York to less locked-down states like Texas.

Humans can be manipulated by fear for a while, but they do have other emotions and desires that don’t go away and that eventually carry the day.

The third scenario is that there will be an enormous backlash against those held responsible for the Great Panic and its abuses. The only force we see as powerful enough to embody that backlash and channel it is nationalism. In this scenario, a violent nationalism would start to emerge in many countries that openly battles ‘international elites’, ‘woke culture’, and anything else seen as a threat to the idea of a great nation. We would then witness nationalistic crowds with all their capacity for both renewal and destruction.

This third scenario seems unlikely because life is still too good in rich Western countries to generate the anger and desperation required to make nationalism sufficiently appealing. Also, elites in rich countries already see nationalism as the main threat to their power and are therefore probably willing to strike a compromise that yields up the worst excesses of their own power and wealth, if this reduces the appeal of nationalism.

While we see the first of these possible futures as the most likely, we do not totally discount the other two, streaks of which have already been seen in different regions across the world. Our best bet is that the rich countries will follow the first scenario, and that this example will then be emulated in most of the remaining world, with some exceptions like China. (Read more.)