Tea at Trianon: 'It Defies All Belief'

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, July 17, 2022

'It Defies All Belief'

From The Wildfire Newsletter:

House Democrats appear to be unconcerned about the optics of shutting down an effort to increase penalties for child sex traffickers in an election year. On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee unanimously shot down such a measure.
"A question about his amendment first," Congressman Ken Buck (R-CO) said. "I want to thank Mr. Roy for this common sense amendment that deals with the overall issue, as opposed to trying to piecemeal this out. And I suspect we won't deal with the overall issue if we continue to piecemeal this out."
"But Mr. Roy, can you think of any circumstance in which an individual induces, coerces, controls a child and forces that child into the sex trade, where that individual, that defendant, that criminal doesn't deserve 15 years in prison?" Buck asked.
"I cannot, no," Congressman Chip Roy (R-NC) answered. "I can appreciate the question from the gentleman. He is, too, a former prosecutor who prosecuted for a lot longer than I did. And I appreciate his recognition of that truth."
"I mean, as a father of two, as a former prosecutor, it defies all belief, all common sense that you would say that someone who traffics a child in the sex industry — actually puts a child into that environment for that child to be sexually abused — that that individual should not have a minimum sentence or 15 years," he added.
"I don't think there is a prison, a hole underneath a prison, deep enough to throw that individual in," Buck commented. (Read more.)