Tea at Trianon: Security in a Bureaucratic State

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, September 18, 2022

Security in a Bureaucratic State

From American Greatness:

Matar, a Shiite of Lebanese descent, had apparently been radicalized during a three-week séjour in Lebanon in 2018, roughly the same amount of time I spent abroad during my last trip. He has since become vocal in his support for the mullah regime online, which apparently went unnoticed by the state security panopticon.

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent every year on the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Security Agency, none of them saw a terrorist threat in Hadi Matar. Yet they continue to insist on dragging me to the room in order to extract sensitive information vital to national security interests, like the exact address of my mother, a retired high school teacher.

Back to the dreaded room, it has probably caused more delays for incoming tourists than it has deterred terrorist plots. Once slated for an interview there, one would usually witness a throng of brown and otherwise dark-skinned people patiently waiting their turns to be questioned by agents who had a look of someone resigned to a perpetual fate of repeatedly asking questions designed to lead them nowhere. After all, how many terrorists were ever caught because they answered “yes” to the surreal question of “Do you or have you ever belonged to a terrorist organization?” To the uninformed, this is an actual question that applicants to a visa or a permanent residency have to answer in their application forms.

In the past, just to quell suspicions of racial profiling, there would always be that one unlucky Asian who was also “randomly” selected to be sent to the room. The ratio of yellow to brown, however, has been steadily increasing in recent years, with the growing threat of Chinese infiltration. Unsurprisingly, and probably in the institutional spirit of diversity and inclusivity, we now also see a random white individual sitting frightened among us in the room. (Read more.)