Tea at Trianon: What’s Really Killing Us

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

What’s Really Killing Us

From Dr. Ben Carson at The Federalist:

In America, we are seeing the early stages of metastasizing leftist cancer. The left’s annihilation of my hometown of Detroit is well-known. Detroit was America’s richest and most successful big city until the early 1950s. Left-wing mayors, city councils, prosecutors, and district attorneys in New York, Baltimore, Chicago, and San Francisco caused massive crime waves. This has led to citizens fleeing those cities in droves, adding to the downward spiral as the pool of responsible voters evaporates. Rampant media censorship covers up this devastation. The murder totals in Chicago averaged 15 per weekend in 2021. But it is unlikely you saw coverage of this in the national news media, or honest, in-depth think pieces about what is causing the carnage and how to fix it
Our public schools, particularly in urban areas, but all over America, are festering cesspools of race-baiting, radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, and low achievement. Teachers unions are the main obstacle to genuine reform. The unions run schools with an iron grip and full support from their Democratic allies. We recently saw Minneapolis Public Schools complete a contract renewal that will fire white teachers first, regardless of seniority or competence. In their efforts to fight a supposedly systemic racist system, they are instituting racist policies. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

The pandemic revealed to us the depths of horrific leadership in public education. But it also showcased a stark contrast between states run by competent executives and those run by leftist hacks. Schools were open and functioning normally in Florida by August 2020. California schoolchildren were still suffering through isolation and Zoom classes a year after that, contributing to learning loss and higher rates of depression, mental health problems, and even suicide. (Read more.)