Tea at Trianon: On the Razor’s Edge

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

Thursday, August 18, 2022

On the Razor’s Edge

From American Greatness:

The planet faces an existential threat. If we don’t act soon, and with great effort, all may be lost. The point of no return is racing toward us at breakneck speed. Action is required today, not just talk. But this apocalypse is not the one we’ve been warned about—the rise in global temperatures by a measly half degree—but rather the complete and total abandonment of logic, reason, and reality in huge swaths of our collective lives. Like children born into great affluence, many seem to believe the incredible wealth, freedom, tolerance and peace we live with—unique in the annals of all human history—is just the way things are. It just “happened” because of the inevitable march of progress and isn’t rooted in any special system design or way of thinking. They think we can’t go back.
What’s more, it is our right to live this way—ours by our very existence. Somehow, we—at least some of us with the correct thoughts—have turned a corner in human history. We are better than those who came before us, and at a very fundamental level—morally, intellectually, spiritually just better than those unwashed, bigoted rubes who came before us. Some have called this a period of untruth; a willful casting aside of that pesky thing called reality. Becoming unmoored from reality allows insane ideas to spread and propagate, putting all life on the planet in jeopardy. The genius design of our Constitution is now seen by many not as the driver of the freest, most prosperous nation the world has ever seen but rather as a hindrance to their hopes of remaking the country into a socialist utopia. (Read more.)