Tea at Trianon: A Stupid Comparison

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, February 12, 2025

A Stupid Comparison

I just wrote to the Star Democrat in response to the Feb 1, 2025 op-ed of Jim Bruce in which Trump is compared to Hitler in what has become the most boring cliché ever. We know you do not like Trump, Mr. Bruce, but is Hitler the only tyrant in history that you can conjure up? And Hitler at the Reichstag, yet. What about Napoleon on the 18 Brumaire at Saint-Cloud in 1799? Oh, wait, Trump never conquered Europe nor invaded Russia like Napoleon, leading to the deaths of 6.5 million people. What about Stalin at the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party in April 1923 in Moscow? Oh, that won’t work either, since Stalin has been blamed for the deaths of 10 million people, maybe more, they don’t know for sure. What about Mao at Tian'anmen on October 1, 1949? Oh no, because they now think that Mao and his policies may be responsible for 80 million fatalities; no one knows the exact amount. The only similar number of deaths that we have had in America since Trump first won the 2016 election is the number of babies aborted, which is in the millions. But they don’t count, do they? Plus abortion is not Trump’s fault, although if Democrats did not love abortion they would find a way to blame him for it, as they do other things. So please stop comparing Trump to a mass murderer like Hitler. It does not insult Trump because it is so absurd, but it does diminish the real victims of the real Nazis, whose bodies are still being recovered in mass graves throughout Eastern Europe.

As for the complaint about Trump’s executive orders, what about all the executive orders given by Obama and Biden? So Democrat presidents can issue executive orders but when Trump does it somehow the Constitution is being violated? I say to all Democrats, especially to Governor Wes Moore and his lament over the “chaos” in Washington (Star Democrat, Feb 5), please focus on fixing the chaos your policies have caused in our schools and in our cities, where too often violence reigns.

I started a podcast for our local GOP. Episode #7 is HERE.