Tea at Trianon: Tough on Crime?

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 11, 2022

Tough on Crime?

From Heather MacDonald at the New York Post:

Yet Biden’s phony narrative about America’s law enforcement officers resulted in widespread depolicing and a flight from the profession. New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Kansas City, Seattle, Portland, San Diego, and Dallas, among many other cities, are seeing record or near record levels of officer resignations, leaving police departments struggling to respond to 911 calls, much less prevent crime before it happens.

So now Biden is calling for the hiring of 100,000 additional police officers as part of his Safer America Plan. Good luck with that. As recently as May 2022, Biden released an executive order alleging that the police disproportionately kill “Black and Brown people” and that there is “systemic racism in our criminal justice system.” The May 2022 order called for “ending discriminatory pretextual stops” — code for ending all remaining proactive stop activity. It called for increased investigations of police departments for civil rights violations.

The recruiting and retention crisis in policing is not an economic problem, it is a problem of morale. Throwing federal taxpayer dollars at local police departments will not help them restock their ranks as long as officers continue to face the charge that they are racist for fighting crime where it occurs most intensely — in minority neighborhoods. (Read more.)