Tea at Trianon: The Question Most Americans Are Asking

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, February 10, 2024

The Question Most Americans Are Asking

Who is running the country? It's not Biden. From Red State:

The Hur report dropped like a bomb on Thursday, and it may have just done in Biden's 2024 re-election campaign. When the news came earlier in the week that the Biden team was worried about the report, you had to know it would be bad--and it is. It's worse than I expected in some of its details. By the way, was the Biden team given a tip-off on what was going to be in the report ahead of time? Because it sure sounds like it, based on that report.
The reactions to it are ripping up the internet, particularly the comments in the report that deal with how bad Biden was during questioning -- that he didn't know when he was vice president and didn't even know within years when his son died. Not to mention how he had documents all over the place; they were kept in an open box in the garage. Biden disclosed classified information as well.
But Special Counsel Robert Hur seemed to give him a pass, weighing his age and issues heavily, saying he was an "elderly man with a poor memory." [emphasis added]
"Mr. Biden's memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023
Given that, Hur wasn't sure he could prove the mental state of willfulness to get a conviction. Our sister site Townhall's Matt Vespa observed the reaction of Donald Trump Jr. He said it for all of us: how could Biden get a pass because of his incapacity, yet he's running and asking us to vote for him, for four more years, to be the leader of the free world with his hands on the nuclear codes. This is the guy who is going to be getting the 3 a.m. call? (Read more.)