Tea at Trianon: Democracy Under Stress

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

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Democracy Under Stress

From Brownstone Insitute:

The US is crucial for the continued lifting of millions of Indians out of Asiatic poverty and for strengthening India’s preparedness against many external security threats. India in turn is critical to the US to meet the strategic challenge of China in the Indo-Pacific through a values-based partnership of democracies committed to the freedom of the seas and the primacy of the law of the sea.

Last week both countries came under threat from the same banana republic playbook that has afflicted and condemned so many countries and peoples to capture by dictators and tyrants. For the first time in both countries, national leaders of defeated political parties faced criminal sanctions because of the abuse of state power by the victors. The cases represent a corruption of justice in each country and constitute grave threats to both republics.

I refer, of course, to the criminal indictment of Donald Trump by a New York grand jury and the conviction of Rahul Gandhi and imprisonment for two years by a court in Gujarat, followed swiftly by his disqualification from Parliament as an elected member. Most legal analysts seem to believe that the case against Trump is very weak and he is likely to be acquitted. Similarly, it would not be at all surprising for Gandhi to be acquitted on appeal. (Read more.)