If all you’ve ever read about the French Revolution is Edmund Burke famous critique of it, well, he’s certainly right about its wretched and inexcusable excesses. Its also an argument for not judging an event from a contemporary pespective because you can’t see how the long term picture may turn out.
Tocqueville’s reading of it is very different because he lived a generation after it took place and his judgment of is more balanced. Posterity tends to side with Tocqueville over Burke and the proof is the French today live in a democratic and rule of law state.
asserting who’s “side” has been picked by “posterity” is pompous, fatuous, and, as you may recall, a famous obamite verbal mind trick — his opponents were always “on the wrong side of history”. it was always particularly annoying.
look, if you want to live in a fetishistic delusion of the terror, and an absolute misunderstanding of the political and historical disasters (plural) that immediately followed, and were caused by, the french revolution, then go with God.
but it’s a bit twisted to admire a violent revolt that descended into chaos, created a republic that barely lasted ten years, and let to Bonaparte and the entire european continent at war.