Tea at Trianon: The Neocons’ Last Gasp

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

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

The Neocons’ Last Gasp

From The Federalist:

Last year Jeffrey Sachs wrote that Ukraine is “the latest neocon disaster.” He described the war in Ukraine as “the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement.” Sachs in that piece recounted the neocon track record of promoting disastrous military adventures that have resulted in diminishing U.S. influence abroad and, in the case of Ukraine, risking a wider European war. Sachs concluded that “[i]nstead of risking this disaster, the real solution is to end the neocon fantasies of the past 30 years and for Ukraine and Russia to return to the negotiating table, with NATO committing to end its commitment to the eastward enlargement to Ukraine and Russia in return for a viable peace that respects and protects Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Sachs’ call for a negotiated solution to the Ukraine War was echoed recently in the pages of The National Interest by Russia expert Alex Burilkov and State Department consultant and military intelligence officer Wesley Satterwhite. Burilkov and Satterwhite call for an American-led peace effort in Ukraine before Russia launches a new offensive in the wake of Ukraine’s failed summer offensive. They call their proposed solution a “Korea scenario,” which will result in Ukraine trading parts of four regions occupied by Russia for “robust Western (American) security guarantees.” This, the authors write, would enable the United States to “defuse tensions with Moscow” and focus on the Pacific and China, where we face a “true peer rival.” (Read more.)