Tea at Trianon: The Courage of J.D. Vance

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, July 17, 2024

The Courage of J.D. Vance

From Daniel McCarthy at Compact:

Vance has a rich biography, of which his bestselling 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, is a powerful part. He served in the US Marine Corps. He earned degrees from Ohio State University and Yale Law School. He succeeded in finance, and in the Obama era was already making his voice heard, and ideas known, as a writer. Vance came of age as a public voice at a time of (dare I say) post-paleoconservatism. The George W. Bush years had ended in disaster for Republicans and the conservative movement. There were attempts by many in Washington and New York to devise something new that wouldn’t be “paleo” or as hard-edged as Buchananism, but that would ask, however belatedly, the questions that had to be asked about capitalism, foreign policy, and the nexus of society and morality in the era after the Manichean struggle with Communism. Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam, Yuval Levin, and numerous others became “reform conservatives,” or moved in parallel with those who accepted that label.
David Frum was one of the 1990s neoconservatives who had taken the trouble to read the paleoconservatives, if only to more forcefully denounce them. He served in the George W. Bush administration, where he promoted war with the cockamamie concept of the “Axis of Evil.” Afterward, he had an association for some time with National Review, until he had a bitter split with the magazine that in 2003 had published his anti-antiwar-conservative screed “Unpatriotic Conservatives.” Having been kicked out of movement conservatism—whatever was left of it at that point—he set up his own website, FrumForum, before he alighted on a perch at The Atlantic. A young J.D. Vance—who at 39 isn’t exactly old today—contributed to the short-lived FrumForum.
A few years later came Hillbilly Elegy, and after that, some personal text messages and public statements expressing distaste for Donald Trump in strong terms. These remarks are now the stuff of CNN exposés and attempts to embarrass the 2024 GOP ticket. The story about Vance that Frum, Mitt Romney, and the media that hate Trump would like everyone to accept goes as follows: Vance was a smart and compassionate man who sold his soul to the devil, first for a Senate seat, now for a slot on Satan’s own presidential ticket. Trump is a rich man who isn’t a populist of any kind, despite the curious fact that ordinary people who’ve been screwed over by elites keep voting for him—he’s a populist in their eyes, but what do they know? Vance had all the makings of a good, respectable member of the slightly chastened liberal or neoconservative elite. He had made money, he had the Ivy League imprimatur, and his far-from-elite background and homeborn concern for the pathologies of hillbilly America were qualities that could give his more privileged peers a bit of compassionate rouge. (Read more.)