Posted on 07/14/2011 3:10:37 PM PDT by Kaslin
July 14 is the day the French people celebrate the storming of the Bastille. This led to the dethroning and beheading of King Louis XVI and the establishment of the first French Republic, which promised “liberty, equality, and fraternity.”
The rest of the story doesn’t go so well. Out of the French Revolution came the Reign of Terror, which saw 16,000-40,000 people guillotined. Within fifteen years, the Republic gave way to the French Empire and the Napoleonic Wars and its millions of deaths.
France is hardly alone in the list of nations with revolutions that failed to live up to their promise. The Bolsheviks in Russia, Chairman Mao in China, and Pol Pot in Cambodia rose to power through revolution with great promises of equality and a better world and managed to bring mass murder instead.
American movies romanticize and celebrate revolutionaries, both the fictional and real ones. Whether it’s Luke Skywalker challenging the empire, or Rambo fighting on the side of the Taliban-like rebels in Rambo III, a revolutionary cause is always considered righteous.
Not only does American popular culture celebrate revolutionaries, we cite our history as proof revolutions are good. But such naïveté is as dangerous as it was in the 18th century. Thomas Paine went to France in support of the French Revolution and found himself imprisoned by the revolutionaries he’d come to help.
The truth is that revolutions rarely result in liberty. They often lead to a new tyranny — often, even worse than the old tyranny. The flaws in czarist Russia and nationalist China paled in comparison to the horrors of the governments that followed. In these revolutions and many more, ordinary people supported revolution for the improvement of their lives and their country. In the end, they wound up used by opportunistic men who aggrandized themselves and imposed their own radical ideas that led to less liberty and prosperity.
For American political leadership, Bastille Day should be a reminder of the need for caution. It is popular to present people with a false choice between isolationism and intervening everywhere in the world. “Regime change” is often bandied about with little thought as to what the new regime will look like or what the consequences will be. Before we try to change another regime, we should be careful to know what we’re changing the regime to and what horrors we may unleash.
Bloggers and journalists often see people standing up to repressive governments in Iran and Egypt and feel euphoria. Responsible leaders and activists must temper their enthusiasm with the realization that, however sincere the sentiments of people in the street, the future of any revolution is determined by the people that end up ruling the country and the principles they follow.
Those who seek freedom and opportunity should learn the lessons of history. Every successful revolution draws ambitious and dangerous people whose interests run counter to that of their fellow citizens. Their support for the revolution may be grounded in the idea they can’t become dictator as long as someone else is holding the position. It matters a great deal whether the leaders of a revolution are like Washington, who refused a crown, or Napoleon, who sought an empire.
Today, Marxist and Islamist ideologues take advantage of the legitimate grievances of the people to put forward their own radical agendas. If revolutionaries are unaware of the dangers, they will find that their sacrifices made their country worse rather than better.
Bastille Day teaches us a revolution can be founded on high-sounding rhetoric and good intentions and go horribly wrong. If we can learn that lesson and become more prudent, perhaps the 21st century will be a little less bloody than the two that preceded it.
Ah yes! Friday the 14th - maybe Cantor will finally take down Obozo!
perhaps the 21st century will be a little less bloody than the two that preceded it.
If history is any teacher, the hopes of that are nil.
If it is less bloody, it will only be because processing
has improved.
The first part didn't go so well either. The garrison surrendered on the promise that they would not be harmed. Then they were murdered.
Excellent, thought-provoking piece.
We are totally disgusted with what Obama has produced, and we face major threats to our country and our way of life.
Do we seek revolution?
Or do we seek a RESTORATION of the great American values of hard work, morality, neighborliness and small government?
The French "Revolution" was the forerunner to those atrocities, precisely because of the philosophy that drove it and those—a collectivist-based one, in opposition to private religion and private morality. There is also the matter of actually striking against a leader to harm him, something that the American War of Independence never did.
France is hardly alone in the list of nations with revolutions that failed to live up to their promise. The Bolsheviks in Russia, Chairman Mao in China, and Pol Pot in Cambodia rose to power through revolution with great promises of equality and a better world and managed to bring mass murder instead
The revolution was an absolute disaster. An often forgotten part of the revolution that is inconvenient to the narrative of it being “the masses rising up and killing the nobility” is the brutal repression in the Vendée by the Republican forces against the peasants who objected to conscription and the government’s radical Anti-Catholicism.
Maxmillien Robespierre goes down in history on par with Hitler and Stalin in terms of evil. He was worse than Napolean; at least the emperor produced a decent legal system amid his wars. Robespierre just killed anyone who stood in his way of absolute power. They were better off with Marie Antoinette and the Louis.
You say that as if Napoleon should be included with the hitlers, stalins etc.. Not even close..
“The rest of the story doesn’t go so well.”
“The first part didn’t go so well either. The garrison surrendered on the promise that they would not be harmed. Then they were murdered.”
Exactly. And “high-soundng principles,” my eye. Perhaps to utter barbarians, not to “rational” humans. Sic semper class-warfarists, wherever you are.
“They were better off with Marie Antoinette and the Louis.”
Infinitely better. Louis XVI had already agreed to reforms that might have equaled the Magna Carta. But the reforms were neither fast enough nor radical enough to satisfy the atheist intellectuals who held sway over the mob. And Robespierre was far from the only villain in the piece. Every (French) revolutionary sympathizer (including Paine and Jefferson) bears guilt for the Reign of Terror.
My revolutionary heros are Pinochet and Franco.
Heck, Jefferson in many ways was even WORSE than Paine in that regard, considering that unlike Paine who presumably traveled to France AFTER learning about its revolution and missing key details due to the months travel required, Jefferson was on-site the minute the revolution occurred with Bastille Day, and despite getting a good look at the carnage STILL supported it.
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