Tea at Trianon: An Execution in Manhattan

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, December 6, 2024

An Execution in Manhattan

From Bethel McGrew at Further Up:

A man was shot down in cold blood on the streets of New York this week. By itself, this is nothing unusual. But the case has made headlines because the victim, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, happened to be a rich man in a loathed profession. The mob has hereby deemed him unworthy of life.
Among the left, dancing on rich men’s untimely graves is a time-honored tradition. Last year, I observed the vile reactions to the deaths of the billionaires on board the Titan submarine. One of them had brought his son, but even he was tainted, in their ruthless eyes. The liturgy of gloating was familiarly despicable.
So, it’s no surprise to see the liturgy being repeated now, from the proudly self-ID’ed “commie” Columbia professor, to the ex-WaPo columnist, to the numerous anon accounts spewing obscenities at me and other writers because we dared to say that cold-blooded murder is, in fact, bad. Someone compares him to Nazi death camp planner Rudolf Höss. Someone else compares him to Osama bin Laden. Here we see a leftist breathlessly praising what seems to have been an Easter egg reference to a book on insurance corruption (titled Delay Deny Defend) in the words the killer scratched on his bullet casings: “deny,” “defend,” “depose.” Sic semper tyrannis…or something. (Read more.)