Tea at Trianon: The England I Knew Is Gone

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

Sunday, August 30, 2026

The England I Knew Is Gone

From Carl Trueman at First Things:

In retrospect, I see that I grew up at a breaking point in English culture. I was (perhaps symbolically) the last person at my school to study Latin and the last not to take computer science. The ancient disciplines were already on life support, and the technocrats were waiting in the wings. My copy of Lewis and Short, the classic Latin dictionary, is an ever-present symbol of this; it was the school’s copy, given to me when I left as it was of no further use to the institution.

Earlier this year, I had a strange premonition of how different England has become. A young Dutch politician, Eva Vlaardingerbroek, was barred from entering the U.K. One of my sisters had never heard of her and therefore did an AI Google search to find out what had made her so dangerous. To her surprise, the chatbot told her that this politician was known, among other things, to refer to my work in public lectures, and that we were both outspoken opponents of transgenderism. The same government, of course, has allowed thousands of anonymous young men to enter the country, providing them with accommodation while only last week finding it necessary to advise them of some quaint aspects of British culture, such as the fact that women are allowed to work, that “if you have sex with someone without their consent, this is called rape,” and that if you indulge in such behavior, “it will affect your asylum claim.” Dutch conservatives who think that women cannot have penises are not welcome, while men from countries that consider rape something of a gray area are entering in droves. Well, I suppose the situation could be worse: They could be fans of J. K. Rowling or retweet posts by Graham Linehan.

England exemplifies the political shape a country takes when expressive individualism grips the imagination of its ruling class. It is impossible for any culture to allow everyone to be who they want to be, from transgender activists to traditional Christians. Somebody therefore has to bring order to the potential chaos, and as expressive individualism tends strongly toward the transgressive, with its core notion that personal authenticity lies in breaking with the herd (that is, the social expectations of the past), the culture-makers will typically favor those who want to demolish received ideas and traditions deemed stumbling blocks to self-realization. This turns morality on its head. Yesterday’s virtues have become today’s oppressive vices, as the moral register has shifted in a psychological direction—most notably in the trivialization of trauma, which in some cases has come to mean little more than “somebody somewhere said something hurtful about me.” Sadly, the Church has often proved little different. (Read more.)