Tea at Trianon: Brutal Election Lessons

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, November 8, 2021

Brutal Election Lessons

From The American Thinker:

Republicans swept the statewide offices in Virginia, a state that had recently tantalized Democrat hopes of national dominance by swinging from red to purple to blue. Even if Phil Murphy ends up winning the governorship of New Jersey as troves of mail-in ballots are added to the totals when counting resumes in the morning (a story replicating what happened in some swing states in 2020), the message is clear: the public does not want to enact the vision of the Squad as our new reality.
Minneapolis voters rejected replacing the city's police department with a social worker–laden Department of Public Safety by a 12-point margin. This in a city that has twice elected radical Ilhan Omar. Buffalo, N.Y. voters corrected their mistake in a low-turnout primary election that nominated radical socialist India Walton as the Democrat candidate for mayor and wrote in the name of incumbent Mayor Byron Brown by a large margin. Voters do not want the radical agenda enacted. (Read more.)