Tea at Trianon: Targets of Assassination

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

Saturday, May 6, 2023

Targets of Assassination

From DC Enquirer:

On Friday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was responsible for writing the majority opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, revealed that he believes he has a “pretty good idea” of the identity of the leaker behind his draft opinion on overturning Roe v. Wade this past May.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was a landmark decision from the Supreme Court this past June, overturning the previous abortion precedent of Roe v. Wade and passing abortion regulation back to state legislatures.
Justice Alito says he is also certain of the reasoning behind the leaked Dobbs draft. “I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible, but that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody,” Alito told The Wall Street Journal. “It was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft… from becoming the decision of the court.”

The leak shook the court and had major effects on the safety of the majority opinion judges due to the high-stakes, controversial nature of the decision. “It was rational for people to believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us,” Alito said of the threats the Justices faced following the leaks. (Read more.)