Tea at Trianon: Why the Left is So Hard to Defeat

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 16, 2025

Why the Left is So Hard to Defeat

From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

That problem is narcissism. Narcissism is not self-love, but the opposite. The narcissist is not full of ego. He has no sense of self. Lacking a stable sense of identity, the narcissist hunts for meaning in therapy, self-help, sex, or radical politics. This is the mental illness and the driving politics of the left.
In his incredible 1979 work The Culture of Narcissism, the historian Christopher Lasch argued that the human personality and psychology have changed over the course of the last century. Americans have transformed from strong and well-adjusted people to those evincing a “minimal” self — a personality that is weak and dependent on government, corporations, radical politics and bureaucracies for a sense of meaning. A central idea in Lasch’s analysis is how infants develop. Citing Freud, Lasch argued that to an infant, interactions with the world result in feelings of either omnipotence or helplessness. In their fantasy world a baby is either the king of the world, demanding their needs get met right now, or is totally helpless and dependent on parents for survival. It represents two extremes that need to be evened out. To do so, it is vital that parents, community, and what Lasch called “transitional objects.” Toys, games, siblings, and pets, introduce limits to the world of the child. These objects shrink the scale of fantasies, introduce reality, and allow a healthy transition into adulthood. In the later 20th century, the raising of the child went to television, the helping professions, schools, and bureaucracies.
[...]
In short, the left are babies with mental problems and violent fantasies. Lasch lamented this psychosis and how “men and women no longer manage even to raise their children without the help of certified experts. The atrophy of older traditions of self-help has eroded everyday competence, in one area after another, and has made the individual dependent on the state, the corporation, and other bureaucracies.” (Read more.)