Tea at Trianon: The Silenced Generation

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

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

The Silenced Generation

From Daniel McCarthy at Chronicles:

Are America’s college students doing to themselves what the Chinese Communist state does to its citizens? An Ivy League professor—an old-fashioned liberal who actually cares about free speech—recently warned me about what’s happening in classrooms like his.

He encourages class discussion of the great books he teaches in class—but students are afraid to speak, not because they’re afraid of the professor but because they fear each other.

Communist regimes have tried to stamp out dissent for more than a century. Tyrants and totalitarians have always tried to sow suspicion among their subjects, turning friends, neighbors, and even family members into informers against anyone who won’t conform to the party line.

That’s the scenario in George Orwell’s dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it’s the intention behind China’s insidious “social credit” system today. What Orwell never imagined, though, was that young men and women in a free society would one day willingly impose “political correctness” on their peers—and use the 21^st century’s decentralized social media to do it.

Students, the professor told me, are afraid to be recorded on their classmates’ cellphones talking about politics and political philosophy—the subjects he teaches—and don’t want to disagree with their fellow students about anything because the person they’re arguing with might belong to a “disadvantaged” group.

It’s not only what you say that’s dangerous, but who you say it to.

A young man getting into an argument with a young woman, or a white student with a black student, is not a “good look” on social media, and a classroom conversation runs the risk of leading to an online inquisition. Conservative students, who often have to face ostracism for their dissenting views, might be less intimidated than liberals and progressives, who aren’t used to not fitting in. (Read more.)