Tea at Trianon: The Post-Covid States of America

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 13, 2023

The Post-Covid States of America

From City-Journal:

As Covid-19 struck America, governors, whether Democrat or Republican, initially followed the Trump administration’s public-health advice to break off human physical contact and, thus, turn off much of the economy. “Effective at 8 PM on Sunday, March 22, all nonessential businesses statewide will be closed,” New York’s then-governor, Democrat Andrew M. Cuomo, decreed. Down in Florida, the response from Republican governor Ron DeSantis was the same. “All persons in Florida shall limit their movements and personal interactions outside of their home to only those necessary to obtain or provide essential services,” DeSantis ruled in early April.

Beyond its devastating impact on human life, Covid-19 was also a jobs crisis. As offices, restaurants, theaters, and construction sites closed from coast to coast, 19.4 million Americans had lost their private-sector jobs by late April. With the unemployment rate blasting from 3.5 percent to 14.7 percent within just days, this abrupt mass layoff was incomparable with any other sudden unemployment spike in history, even the Great Depression. Notwithstanding trillions of dollars in aid from President Donald Trump and the Democratic Congress to replace (and even surpass) unemployed workers’ lost income, the goal, from the perspective not just of ending the unsustainable federal largesse but also of protecting mental health and social cohesion, had to be to get people back to their normal routines, including work, as fast as possible. (Read more.)