Tea at Trianon: All Will be Well

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

Friday, November 8, 2024

All Will be Well

From The New Jerusalem:

What’s more, they routinely abuse the legal system and transgress the First Amendment. Had they won, they might have endangered my livelihood and even my freedom. The only time in the evening I was overcome by emotion was when a talented young artist who has been accused of crimes for political reasons approached me at the Daily Wire office party. “I’m not going to jail!” he said. That he should have to say those words broke my heart. That he could say them moved me deeply.
There was much talk of God last night. God had protected Donald Trump from a bullet. God had written a comeback narrative for the ages. God had given our nation a chance to turn away from abortion and other atrocities and become what G. K. Chesterton once said we were: “a nation with the soul of a church.”
I believe all this is so. All outcomes are with God and there are none without him. But, of course, when the evening began, we could not predict what the outcomes would be. Free will is real, and God will let us thwart his present plans if we insist. The votes were ours to cast.
But loving God, we know he will ultimately put even our catastrophes to some good end, even if it’s an end beyond our understanding.
And so while I am, of course, jubilant in victory, I would have gone on in defeat as before, speaking what I believe to be the truth. Loss of livelihood would not have stopped me. I know this, because it has not stopped me in the past. Loss of freedom would not have stopped me. It might have killed me, but not stopped me. I have no doubt about it. (Read more.)

From The Lunatic Farmer:

The deplorables and garbage people won again. Can you believe it?

I've been contacted by the Trump transition team to hold some sort of position within the USDA and have accepted one of the six "Advisor to the Secretary" spots. My favorite congressman, Thomas Massie from Kentucky, has agreed to go in as Secretary of Agriculture. He's been the sponsor of the PRIME ACT, which, if pushed through, would be the biggest shot across the bow of the entrenched industrial meat processing system we've seen in a century. Let liberty ring. Wouldn't that be a change of fortune for Big Ag?

If RFK Jr. goes in as Sec. of Health and Human Services, everything will be inverted. Talk about the coolest turn about. He'd be the boss of the Faucis and Francis Collins--the whole covid anti-science crowd. Wouldn't that be a change of fortune for Big Pharma?

And if Elon Musk goes in as a Government Waste Czar, do you think he could possibly find something?

Here's an interesting tidbit. All the income taxes in the U.S. are $2 trillion a year. Government spending and borrowing are so out of control that if we eliminated $2 trillion from the budget, it would only set us back to 2020. Does anyone think returning to government spending in 2020 would destroy things? Of course not. So all we have to do is cut federal spending to 2020 levels and we can eliminate income tax. Period. Done. How would that make you feel?

Most people don't know enough history to know that the federal government was to be financed entirely from tariffs and excise taxes. In fact, as a nation we operated just fine for nearly 150 years without an income tax. The only president who eliminated the national debt was Andrew Jackson, and he did it by eliminating the second bank of the U.S. Nearly 100 years later we got the third bank, known as the Federal Reserve, plus the income tax.

During that time, tariffs averaged 40-50 percent. After the income tax, tariffs dropped to an average of about 7 percent, where they remain today. If we went back to 40 percent, like we had for nearly 150 years, we would bring production home and free our citizens from impoverishing taxes. (Read more.)