Tea at Trianon: Ben Shapiro's Testimony Before Congress

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, July 13, 2024

Ben Shapiro's Testimony Before Congress

From The Vigilant Fox on X:

We're in the midst of a trust crisis in the world of media, which is because so many in the legacy media have lied in order to preserve left-leaning narratives. To take just the most recent example, we were told by the legacy media that President Biden was just fine. For years, anyone who questioned his health and mental fitness was trafficking in cheap fakes. And then President Biden went out and engaged in a full-scale mental collapse on stage in front of hundreds of millions of people.
So we can see why Americans, at least Americans who are not Democrats, do not trust the media. The question isn't really why the legacy media have lost Americans' trust. We know that answer. The question is why, despite that loss of trust, the legacy media continue to gain share in the advertising market. And the answer is simple. There is, in fact, an informal pressure system created by Democratic legislators, this White House, legacy media, advertisers, and pseudo-objective brand safety organizations. That system guarantees that advertising dollars flow only to left-wing media brands.
Let me explain how this works. When a conservative competitor to the legacy media arises, members of that legacy media and their political allies rush to paint such competitors as dangerous. The commentator Kara Swisher of the New York Times, for example, told the head of YouTube that my videos at Daily Wire were a gateway drug that would lead children, including her own teenage son, to watch neo-Nazi content. Nevermind the yarmulke. (Read more.)

Ben Shapiro interviews Douglas Murray about October 7.