Tea at Trianon: J.D. Vance and the Ashes of Our Fathers

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 15, 2024

J.D. Vance and the Ashes of Our Fathers

From The European Conservative:

Wagner strenuously objected to Vance’s description of America as not just an idea but “a group of people with a shared history and a common future” and warned that “the idea of sharing the burial plot” actually “reveals a lot about someone who fundamentally believes in the supremacy of whiteness and masculinity, couched … in a revisitation of his roots.” This, Wagner went on, “is actually revealing about what he thinks matters and who America is, that America is a place for people with his shared Western background … that is the nation of America that he wants to resurrect.”
Leave aside, if you can, the searing stupidity of accusing a father of biracial children of white supremacy. Why is Vance’s desire to be buried with his people so threatening? What is it about his sense of roots and love of place that causes a certain sort of journalist to suffer mental malfunction on live TV? It is difficult not to conclude that this rootedness is recognized, perhaps instinctively, as a threat to the rootlessness upon which the myth of progress depends, which is why his accusers defaulted to weird claims of racism. Vance’s decision to honour his forebears was a potent rebuke to those who insist that we scour history only for their sins. (Read more.)