Tea at Trianon: The Easy Pass For Criminals

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, September 2, 2025

The Easy Pass For Criminals

From AND Magazine:

Zohran Mamdani, the radical leftist candidate for Mayor of New York City, likes to claim that he is running a campaign funded by small donations from average citizens. Mamdani is a liar. Mamdani brings in massive amounts of money from wealthy, ultra-liberal out-of-state donors. A perfect example is Liz Simons, the billionaire heiress to the Simons fortune, who just handed the PAC supporting Mamdani’s campaign $250,000.
Liz Simons and her husband, Mark Heising, run the Heising-Simons Foundation and the associated Heising-Simons Action Fund. Using the money made by Liz’s billionaire father, they fund the predictable list of leftist causes. Chief amongst these is the dismantling of the criminal justice system. (Read more.)

Law-abiding citizens are silenced. From Amuse on X:

Consider France. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Éric Zemmour’s movement have electrified French politics since 2016. Their rise has been met not with the rough-and-tumble of democratic contestation but with judicial harassment. Le Pen was prosecuted for tweeting images of ISIS atrocities, stripped of her parliamentary immunity, and even ordered to undergo a psychiatric exam. Though she was ultimately acquitted, the process itself conveyed a chilling message: criticize Islamist terror too sharply, and you may find yourself in court. In March 2025, a French court convicted Le Pen of embezzling EU funds and imposed a five-year political ban, ensuring she could not stand in 2027 unless her appeal succeeded. The verdict provoked bipartisan unease, with even centrist leaders warning against judges deciding which candidates voters may support. Zemmour, too, has endured multiple hate-speech convictions for comments on immigration and Islam. Critics may despise his rhetoric, but the prosecution of a presidential candidate for campaign statements is a dangerous precedent in a democracy. France has also dissolved right-wing groups like Génération Identitaire and enacted censorship laws empowering courts to remove “fake news” during elections. These measures are defended as protecting democracy, yet they undercut the very pluralism and free expression on which democracy depends.
Germany’s case is no less troubling. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has surged to become the country’s second party, at times topping national polls. In response, German authorities have unleashed censorship and surveillance. The 2018 NetzDG law forced platforms to delete “illegal” speech within 24 hours or face massive fines, leading to widespread over-censorship. AfD leaders have been investigated for tweets critical of Muslim immigration, their accounts suspended, and even criminal complaints filed for “incitement.” More serious still, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency placed the entire AfD under surveillance in 2021, treating the main opposition as a security threat. In 2025, the BfV escalated matters by officially designating AfD a “proven extremist organization,” enabling deeper spying and fueling calls for an outright ban. The government also banned Compact, a right-leaning magazine, raiding its offices and silencing its voice. Supporters of these actions argue that militant democracy requires restrictions to defend the constitutional order. Yet this logic threatens to collapse into authoritarianism, where the establishment alone decides who is fit to participate in politics. Even Friedrich Merz of the CDU warned that banning AfD would disenfranchise millions. NATO’s promise is not militant democracy, it is liberal democracy. A party with 20% of the electorate cannot be outlawed without abandoning the principle of free political choice.
The Netherlands offers further evidence of this pattern. Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, has spent nearly a decade in courtrooms for his rhetoric. In 2016 he was convicted of inciting discrimination for asking supporters if they wanted “fewer Moroccans.” Judges later upheld the conviction in 2020, a remarkable fact: a politician was found guilty of a crime for repeating the desires of his own supporters. Thierry Baudet, leader of Forum for Democracy, has likewise faced judicial censorship, ordered to delete tweets comparing COVID restrictions to the Holocaust and barred from making such analogies in the future. In 2023, Baudet’s party was suspended from parliamentary debates for a week, silencing an elected faction. In 2024, Dutch prosecutors deemed FvD campaign ads to be criminal hate speech and summoned party leaders as suspects. These are not marginal figures, they are leaders of parties that regularly win millions of votes. When courts censor their campaign speech and parliaments suspend their voices, the line between democracy and repression grows perilously thin. (Read more.)