Tea at Trianon: Coup in Romania

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

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Coup in Romania

From Amuse on X:

On November 24, 2024, Romanian voters chose Călin Georgescu, an independent conservative and nationalist, as the leading candidate for the presidency. He won the first round of voting with a plurality, 23 percent, in a multi-candidate race. In any normal republic, this would constitute a mandate to advance to a second round. Instead, the Constitutional Court, under intense pressure from the European Union, annulled the result two weeks later, citing supposed "Russian interference" for which no persuasive evidence has been offered.
This annulment was not merely a legal technicality. It was a political decapitation. Georgescu, the popular choice, was then banned from running in the re-held election, scheduled for March 2025, on the basis of criminal investigations conveniently filed in the interim. The charges, including "incitement to actions against the constitutional order", read like a parody of authoritarian pretexts. To speak out against the EU, to question the wisdom of supranational control, to speak in the voice of national sovereignty, is now, in some corners of Europe, criminal. One wonders what speech remains protected.
George Simion, leader of the conservative Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), stepped in as Georgescu's replacement. His candidacy was lawful, validated by both the Central Electoral Bureau and the Constitutional Court. He campaigned openly, and in the first round of the rescheduled election held on May 4, 2025, he secured nearly 41 percent of the vote. His nearest opponent, Nicușor Dan, the favored son of the EU, an apostle of bureaucratic centralism, open borders, and transnational compliance, received just 21 percent. Simion led by nearly double digits in pre-runoff polls. On the ground, the energy was his. The crowds, his. The momentum, unmistakable.
Then came the result. According to Romania's electoral authorities, Dan miraculously won the runoff with 54 percent of the vote to Simion's 46 percent. From a 20-point deficit to an 8-point win, with near-identical vote shares reported from every district. The statistical uniformity of the outcome itself raises questions that no serious democracy can afford to ignore. Is it plausible that every voting precinct, across a nation as diverse and divided as modern Romania, would return nearly identical margins? (Read more.)