Tea at Trianon: Authoritarianism Without Authority

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

Monday, February 6, 2023

Authoritarianism Without Authority

From The American Mind:

In the past few years, examples of scientism in action are legion. Its mantra is the oft-repeated imperative to just “follow the science!” In November of 2020, Anthony Fauci, the pope of scientism, complained that “science” had become politically divisive—as if debate and dissent are somehow antithetical to the scientific or political processes rather than inherent in both. Fauci reprimanded the public that in spite of their independent spirit, “now is the time to do what you’re told.”

Crafting broad public policy necessarily involves a whole host of various prudential and political judgments outside the realm of science. Ethical concerns must be weighed, and various goods ordered. Smuggling such prudential and political judgments under the cloak of science effectively condemns reasonable dissent as anti-science, as a heresy worthy of censorship and ridicule.

This should have alarmed us all. Freedom of thought and speech are fundamental to a truth-seeking society. Censorship and collective shaming are essential to the perpetuation of a fraud. Yet half the country shrugged, and more than half played along.

In his book, The Captive Mind, Polish poet and political dissident Czeslaw Milosz wrote of the various ways in which people come to accept totalitarian narratives. His own break from Communism he describes as attributable less to the reasoning of his mind than to the revolt of his stomach: “A man may persuade himself, by the most logical reasoning, that he will greatly benefit his health by swallowing live frogs; and, thus rationally convinced, he may swallow a first frog, then the second; but at the third his stomach will revolt. In the same way, the growing influence of the doctrine on my way of thinking came up against the resistance of my whole nature.”

The list of live frogs forced down our throats under the name of “The Science” is long. Liquor stores and strip clubs are essential for humanity, but churches are expendable, according to “The Science.” “The Science” also calculated that the entirely predictable catastrophe of school closures on kids’ emotional, physical, academic, and psychological health was worthwhile. Disagree and you’re a grandma killer.

For many, the third frog came in the summer of 2020, when cities across America exploded in protests and riots, masks barely on or entirely missing from protestors’ faces, bodies jostling together by the thousands for hours and days and weeks on end. Meanwhile, others watched their loved ones die over FaceTime, deprived of one of the most important and deeply human experiences in life. Was it “The Science” that allowed one, but not the other, sort of gathering?

Having recently lost my father, the idea that such a clearly politicized edict could have prevented us from being physically present with him stirs in me a combination of revulsion and rage. Holding his hand, kissing his forehead, cupping his face and looking into each other’s eyes when he could no longer form words—these are not matters of scientific measure.

How did every American’s stomach not revolt against this grotesque injustice? (Read more.)