Tea at Trianon: Hijacking America’s Story

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, January 26, 2026

Hijacking America’s Story

From The Claremont Review of Books:

Upon his death in 1799, George Washington was hailed as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” It is no wonder, then, that a statue of the “Father of His Country” has stood in front of Independence Hall, our country’s birthplace, since the mid-19th century. It is here, after all, that Washington was unanimously chosen in 1775 as commander-in-chief of the fledgling Continental Army, which he led to an upset victory at Yorktown six years later that “turned the world upside down.” It is here that he was unanimously chosen by his fellow delegates to be the president of the Constitutional Convention. And it is here that, having been the presidential electors’ unanimous choice as the nation’s first chief executive, he served the bulk of his two successful terms, guiding the new government through its crucial early years and setting well-considered constitutional precedents at every turn.
And yet, visit Independence National Historical Park as run by the National Park Service and its allies, and you’ll find that Washington is more heavily criticized now than King George III. He is an irredeemable slaveholder, a hypocrite for the ages, his actions characterized as “deplorable,” “profoundly disturbing,” and as having “mocked the nation’s pretense to be a beacon of liberty.” He stands accused, with other founders, of “injustice” and “immorality.”

Authorized by an act of Congress in 1948 and officially established in 1956, Independence National Historical Park is tasked with “preserving for the benefit of the American people as a national historical park certain historical structures and properties of outstanding and national significance…associated with the American Revolution and the founding and growth of the United States.” Covering about 50 acres in the middle of historic Philadelphia, the park includes a variety of buildings familiar to lovers of American history, such as Carpenter’s Hall (where the First Continental Congress met), the First and Second National Banks, and replica versions of the Declaration House (where Thomas Jefferson wrote his draft) and City Tavern (where statesmen met throughout the founding period), both of which were (re-)built for the Bicentennial.

The most frequently visited portions of the park are the two square blocks framed by Market Street, Walnut Street, and 5th and 6th Streets. Of these two blocks, the southern one is Independence Square, which features Congress Hall, where the House of Representatives and Senate met for most of their first decade in existence; Old City Hall, where the Supreme Court met over that same span; and Independence Hall itself, where American independence was declared and our Constitution framed. The northern block includes the Liberty Bell Center, where the famous bell hangs, and the President’s House Site, which features the ruins of where Washington and John Adams each lived and worked during most of their presidencies.

The National Park Service’s “interpretations” at these sites leave much to be desired. The President’s House exhibit, at which visitors will read sign after sign suggesting how selfish and unprincipled Washington was, opened in 2010, during the Barack Obama presidency, at the beginning of the woke era. As with many deleterious shifts in our society, however, the change in the park’s tone actually began during George W. Bush’s presidency, if not earlier. The Park Service’s “Long-Range Interpretive Plan,” released in 2007, repeatedly emphasizes “diversity.” It bizarrely characterizes our national motto, E pluribus unum—out of many, one—as meaning that diversity is our strength; inanely juxtaposes Benjamin Franklin’s signing of the Declaration of Independence with “his attempt to control his children’s choices,” and views the world through the lens of “class, religion, ethnic[ity], rac[e], gender,” and “haves” and “have nots.”

At least there are no longer big video screens in the windows of the Declaration House, filled with the much-larger-than-life eyes of the descendants of Monticello slaves, as was the case in the summer of 2024. That display was a product of the National Park Service’s partnership with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (which maintains Monticello) and artist Sonya Clark, whose works “address race and visibility, explore Blackness, and redress history,” and who said that the eyes were “bearing witness. (Read more.)