Tea at Trianon: Elites Keep Saying It's Not True

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, October 5, 2026

Elites Keep Saying It's Not True

From David Strom at Hot Air:

Most religions have some version of an evangelical streak, and rightly so. If you believe that you are following the one true path, it is your duty (in most religions) to spread the word. There are exceptions, like Judaism, but the principle mostly holds.
What makes Islam particularly aggressive is that it is not just a religious tradition or set of beliefs; it is a totalitarian ideology that doesn't allow for a separation of politics and religion, and that is based on the belief that civil law and religious duty are the same thing, and that its mission is to spread Islam to the entire world through all necessary means. Islam has always spread through conquest and, ironically, colonialism. In many ways, it is the opposite of Judaism in that regard, despite the fact that Jews are accused of being the ultimate colonialists. Jews are almost uniquely particularist, with no impulse to spread the word and little interest in territorial expansion beyond their historical borders. (Read more.)