Tea at Trianon: Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom

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, April 17, 2023

Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom

From Brownstone Institute:

The CCP has held to the command-and-control model ever since, with variable results. In 1958, Mao launched a forced march towards development known as the Great Leap Forward. This is estimated to have led to 30 million people dying of starvation as the population forfeited much of their actual real-world produce to the state, based on fictional production figures and targets. In 1966, Mao had another genius idea, launching the Cultural Revolution, which caused another two million deaths, and turned the population and family members against each other.

Mao did not invent the hundred flowers maxim, which (according to that infallible authority ChatGPT) dates back to the philosopher Xunxi and the Warring States Period in which many competing schools of thought emerged, including Taoism and Confucianism.

The hundred flowers dictum is both an eloquent expression of the liberal ideal, and (in the case of Mao) a stark warning of the consequences of abandoning it. Allowing ‘the authorities’ unchecked power to impose their will on a country and relieving them from any pressure to consider alternative options is likely to lead to disaster. This is true of all autocratic regimes; it is not just a left-wing phenomenon. One fascist leader, Hitler, made the decisions that precipitated the Second World War, which led to total deaths estimated to range between 70 and 85 million people.

Autocratic leaders led the world over the cliff in the 20th century. But this could not happen in a functioning democracy, could it?

The extent to which democratic governments follow the will of the people is debatable, but their advantage over autocratic governments should be their superior self-correcting capability. If government policies turn out badly, alternative governments are ready to discredit them to win power themselves, until they in turn fall out of favor with the public and are replaced. If a government will not make a U-turn, replace it with another government that will.

Unfortunately, this self-correcting capability has not been very evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. Why not? (Read more.)