Tea at Trianon: What Do Progressives Really Want?

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

Saturday, October 24, 2026

What Do Progressives Really Want?

From The New Criterion:

It goes without saying that the socialists want everything free: free housing, free healthcare, free childcare, free pre-K; at the least, below-cost groceries. All this freeness will be paid for by “the rich.” Alas, there seems to be no plan for what happens when the money spigot runs dry because you’ve just confiscated all the assets of the people who made your society tick over. Repeated back-of-the-envelope demonstrations that “the rich” don’t have the wherewithal to pay for everything even if you suck up their last sou never faze these people. No, if only the “oligarchs” stopped picking everyone’s pockets, we’d all live on easy street. “Medicare for all” is also appealingly catchy. Yet Medicare reimbursement rates for hospitals average 10 percent below the break-even point; without overpayment by private insurers, the entire U.S. health system would collapse. Progressives aren’t big on math. Conservatives care about what works; leftists care about what should work.

This stuff is socialist same old, same old. More intriguing for me is the dsa’s proposition to eliminate the U.S. Senate, the presidency, and the Electoral College; axing ice is a mere kicker. Such a drastic revision of the Constitution would require an incalculable number of amendments, all approved by two-thirds of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of a Senate that would be voting for its own demise, as well as three-quarters of state legislatures to ratify them all. Really? In truth, the proposal is to rip up the Constitution, a prospect that would presently require nothing less than an armed popular uprising, perhaps a war between the New Mamdani Army and the federal government. Not that these folks are taking responsibility for promoting such a thing. After all, nearly every revolution other than the rather civilized American one has ended in catastrophe.

Yet these are also people who, despite rabble-rousing rhetoric, don’t really enjoy conflict. Ask any conservative podcaster how difficult, even impossible, it is to entice progressives to participate in a conversation with someone who actually disagrees with them. Trans activists reliably back out of media opportunities that would involve confronting their terfy critics face-to-face. Progressive views—on climate change, Palestine, dei, reparations, no-bail laws, men in women’s sports, abortion, welfare, and immigration—are a set menu. Individual leftists almost never deviate from this ideological rubber chicken. So progressives don’t only avoid conflict with their antagonists; they also avoid conflict with each other. (Read more.)