Tea at Trianon: The Middle American Machiavelli

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

Sunday, June 19, 2022

The Middle American Machiavelli

From Contra:

For an example of a quintessential piece of political formalism, Burnham pointed to Dante Alighieri’s “De Monarchia.” Its meaning “serves to express, in an indirect and disguised manner, what may be called the real meaning of the essay.” By “real meaning,” Burnham explained, “I refer to the meaning not in terms of the mythical world of religion, metaphysics, miracles, and pseudohistory (which is the formal meaning of ‘De Monarchia’), but in terms of the actual world of space, time, and events.”
Taken at face value, Dante’s goal is “the development of the full potentialities of all men, universal peace, and a single unified world-state” overseen by a strong and sovereign Holy Roman Emperor who is independent of the Pope and the Church in his temporal, political authority. For all that is required to realize his ultimate aim: eternal salvation. Dante advances this argument in largely formal terms, which Burnham eviscerates. “They consist of pointless metaphysical and logical distinctions, distorted analogies, garbled historical references, appeals to miracles and arbitrarily selected authorities,” he concluded. Instead, the real meaning of “De Monarchia”—what it would mean for the actual world of space and time—is much simpler: revenge against his political enemies in Florence by enlisting the help of her enemy, the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VII of Luxembourg.
It’s hard to do Burnham’s “The Machiavellians” justice in so few words, but it is enough to say that Machiavellians refuse to take at face value the words and ideals of men but rather subject these things to ruthless interrogation to discover their real meaning. It was this method that was on display in Francis’ March 1981 op-ed for the New York Times, “Soviet Support of Terrorism.”
In about 700 words, Francis dissected the Soviet strategy of terror and took to task what he viewed as an incompetent and unserious domestic commentariat. “One sometimes has the impression from their writings that the Russians support terrorism just because they are mean and nasty,” he wrote. “In fact, Soviet assistance for terrorism—what Marxists call ‘national liberation movements’—is an integral part of Moscow’s strategy of political warfare.” (Read more.)