Tea at Trianon: How the Left Learned to Love Banks

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

Thursday, August 10, 2023

How the Left Learned to Love Banks

From Spiked Online:

As the reaction on social media has suggested, and as polls have confirmed, those of a leftish disposition are far more supportive of Coutts’s decision to strip Farage of his bank account. In fact, some on the liberal left see no issue whatsoever with banks discriminating against customers for their political views. Journalists, comedians and even Labour politicians have downplayed, mocked or sought to justify this act of corporate censorship. Those of a right-wing and small-c conservative persuasion, on the other hand, have tended to be far more critical of the Coutts’s behaviour.

What a curious state of affairs. Today, it is self-styled ‘progressives’ who seem to be the most steadfast supporters of bankers, while those on the political and cultural right tend to be their greatest detractors. But this is no aberration. The Farage affair reflects a significant political transformation – namely, how the woke left has come to love global capitalism, and how conservatives have come to hate it. (Read more.)