Tea at Trianon: William F. Buckley at 100

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

Saturday, November 29, 2025

William F. Buckley at 100

From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

This year marks the 100th anniversary of William F. Buckley’s birth and the 70th anniversary of National Review, the magazine he founded. There have been several tributes to the godfather of modern conservatism. It’s also a proper occasion to note that Buckley would have loved the Anti-Communist Film Festival. I’m working out the details to hold the event next year. Buckley would have loved the in-your-face-ness of the festival, as well as the powerful cultural component. We are taking on Hollywood on its own turf, renting out a theater in Washington, D.C., and showing some classic anti-communist films.
This is a different and more powerful approach to changing the culture than delivering a white paper at a think tank. William F. Buckley would know this because Buckley was not just an erudite and brilliant thinker, but a fighter. This was pointed out by Daniel J. Flynn recently in The Imaginative Conservative. In researching Buckley, Flynn noted that “the aspect of his personality that surprised most pertained to his capacity to morph into Bill ‘the Brawler’ Buckley when the situation called for it.” (Read more.)