Tea at Trianon: The Death of Truth

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, August 18, 2026

The Death of Truth

From Gavin Ashenden.at New English Catholic:

The death of Professor Jason Arday is a great tragedy, and those who pray will immediately want to pray for his soul, but not just for his own soul, but for the souls of those who manipulated, used and abused him by finding in him a useful instrument for the progressive fantasy of diversity, inclusion and equity.
Suicide always leaves anybody touched by it, which includes those who read about it, with a sense of guilt. We cannot escape the question of whether or not there was anything we could have done to save a life from despair, or whether there was anything we did to contribute to the despair?
And so, in order to face those questions, many of the people who found in Professor Arday a useful tool for their propagandisation of progressive ideology need to divert and deflect the blame to others.
Already the accusations have been made that those who asked questions about the truth were to blame for placing a fragile man under pressure, as if there is some kind of trade-off between personal fragility and claims for truth. (Read more.)