Tea at Trianon: Are Autocrats Always Adversaries?

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, December 21, 2021

Are Autocrats Always Adversaries?

From PJB:

When did the political systems of 193 nations become the business of the government of the United States? And who elected us Americans to write the moral code for the regimes that rule other lands? Consider: On taking office, President Joe Biden pledged to center his foreign policy "on the defense of democracy and the protection of human rights." At his Summit for Democracy, he said it was America's intent to undertake the bolstering of democracy and human rights worldwide. Yet no nation bristles more than we Americans do when we discover foreign regimes meddling in our politics or presidential elections. Why? Historically, Americans have collaborated not only with democracies but also with autocrats, dictators, monarchs and tyrants.

George Washington danced a jig when he learned an alliance had been forged with the France of King Louis XVI to fight beside us in our war of independence against the England of King George III, in whose army Washington had himself fought in the French and Indian War. (Read more.)