Tea at Trianon: It's Darkest Before Dawn

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

Monday, April 14, 2025

It's Darkest Before Dawn

From Tierney's Real News:

As I predicted, President Trump quietly announced on Truth Social that he is purposefully crashing the stock market, as part of his Save America plan, in order to force the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates. Why? So that the economy can thrive with lower borrowing costs and we can reduce the US TRILLION DOLLAR interest debt. It’s always darkest before the dawn.
VIDEO: “Trump is crashing the stock market by 20% this month, but he’s doing it on purpose. This is why Warren Buffett just said that President Trump is making the best economic moves for the country that he’s seen in over 50 years. Here’s the secret game he’s playing. He’s pushing cash into US Treasuries which forces the Fed to slash interest rates in May.

These lower rates gives the Fed the ability to REFINANCE TRILLIONS of dollars of debt very inexpensively. It also weakens the dollar and drops mortgage rates for consumers. His tariff strategy is a genius play. It actually forces companies to build here to dodge them. It also forces farmers to sell more of their products here in the US to bring grocery prices way down. We’ve already seen this with eggs.

Remember, 94% of all stocks are owned by only 8% of Americans. So, President Trump is taking from the rich short-term and handing the money to the middle-class through lower prices.” (Read more.)

Also from Mrs. Tierney:

President Trump’s entire goal with tariffs is to bring critical industry back to America (or to countries that we can trust won’t turn them against us) so we aren’t beholding to our enemies for things we really need. Can you imagine relying on an enemy for things we need to survive and then have them declare war on us? Where would we be then? Remember during COVID when they told us that antibiotics were in short supply because they all come from Communist China? That’s just insane.
We can keep some manufacturing in other countries for things we can live without - and where the economics don’t make sense to move to America - but that is a delicate balancing act and must be dealt with line by line.
Trump originally imposed a 10% baseline tariff on nearly all trading partners, with higher rates (20%-50%) targeting specific countries, particularly China. National security concerns drive separate processes for semiconductors and pharmaceuticals under something called Section 232 investigations - which the media always fails to mention. (Read more.)

On "J. D. Vance and the Pursuit of American Happiness" from C.C. Pecknold at Postliberal Order:

I am very biased, but it strikes me as obvious and reasonable to state that we have never had a more compelling Catholic statesman in the White House. We will be comparing J.D. Vance to John F. Kennedy for many years, not only for their similarities but also for their deep differences as Catholic statesmen. They share, of course, manly vigor and rhetorical power. But where JFK held his faith in abeyance, with Catholic principles subordinated to the rules of liberal order, JDV takes a much more traditional approach — it is among the duties of a Catholic statesman that Christian principles will inform decisions of governance, not be separated from them. To win high office in America at the peak liberalism’s power meant conformity to the liberal arrangement in which Christian faith belonged to a private and personal realm, and religion played no role in public decision-making. Octagenarian Catholic politicians like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi exemplified the weakness of this approach as they showed up at Mass as private persons, but voted against the Church’s moral code in public. The Vice President represents the opposite of this liberal standard. He has stated very clearly that religious liberty is not just about legal safeguards, but it’s about supporting and encouraging faith in God. And he’s not been shy about expressing that faith in a way which actually illuminates government policies such as we have seen in his appeal to the ordo amoris for explaining immigration policy. (Read more.)