History Channel: The French Revolution

History Channel

[Borges]

Did anyone catch this the other night? The common attempt to link the American revolution and the French was certainly not present here. The differences couldn't be more blunt. Robespierre, Marat and the rest of their gang were nothing less then brutal totalitarian mass murderers.

[Aquinasfan]

IMHO, Rousseau, like de Sade, was a madman.

Yup. He pioneered the modern idea of children being raised by the State. Practicing what he preached, he left all of his children (6?) at the door of an orphanage where they faced almost certain death.

Bad philosophers are almost always bad people.

[ArmyTeach]

I've heard it said that there are two world-views resulting from the Enlightenment upon which social systems and governance have been established. One is the Anglo-American model. We had a war, however bloody. The other is the Franco-Prussian model, from which we have the French Revolution, Marxism, fascism. Freedom and liberty versus violence and totalitarianism. Voila la difference.
Whaddayathink?

[elhombrelibre]

Yet most conservatives view Burke as the first great writer with his great diatribe against the French Revolution - Reflections on the Revolution in France.

[lugsoul]

That's impressive. Two incorrect factual themes in a single post.

Well, your opinion that it couldn't have been much might mean something it it was supported by any evidence other than your assessment of TJ's communications skills. The man was our ambassador, fgs. You don't think he was communicating with French officials? If you actually look at evidence, rather than simply spouting uninformed opinions, you'll see a pile of correspondence between TJ and members of the Assembly about the specific provisions of the DRMC. But don't trouble yourself with evidence.

As for your statement that TJ "refused to admit a darker side" for the rest of his life - that's just false.

I know it is alot easier to simply make statements without regard for their accuracy, but it doesn't advance the ball.

[elhombrelibre]

There were some actors, but it was really pretty good.

[elhombrelibre]

We got to the moon without the metric system. Enough said.

[elhombrelibre]

Recall too that Thomas Paine was nearly executed in France during the revolution. I don't know why, but he was out of step with the constantly changing revolution and it's wrath.

[elhombrelibre]

I remember reading once and having an historian confirm that there were only about 7 people in Bastille when it was liberated. They were common criminals. Still, just as there is a myth about all the French Resistance, when far more Frenchmen collaborated with the Nazis, there is a myth that Bastille was a great symbol of tyranny.

[Mark in the Old South]

I can not remember if it was seven but it wasn't very many and the Bastille was schedule for demolition by the crown until all was interrupted by that unpleasantness.

[Mark in the Old South]

I would like to add King Louis IX, aka Saint Louis IX and Charles Martel, even if he isn't a saint.

[lugsoul]

"I received, through Mr. Warden, the copy of your valuable work on the French Revolution, for which I pray you to accept my thanks. That its sale should have been suppressed is no matter of wonder with me. The friend of liberty is too feelingly manifested, not to give umbrage to its enemies. We read in it, and weep over, the fatal errors which have lost to nations the present hope of liberty, and to reason for fairest prospect of its final triumph over all imposture, civil and religious. The testimony of one who himself was an actor in the scenes he notes, and who knew the true mean between rational liberty and the frenzies of demagogy, are a tribute to truth of inestimable value. The perusal of this work has given me new views of the causes of failure in a revolution of which I was a witness in its early part, and then augured well of it. I had no means, afterwards, of observing its progress but the public papers, and their information came through channels too hostile to claim confidence. An acquaintance with many of the principal characters, and with their fate, furnished me grounds for conjectures, some of which you have confirmed, and some corrected. Shall we ever see as free and faithful a tableau of subsequent acts of this deplorable tragedy?"

"fatal errors". "frenzies of demagogy". "deplorable tragedy." It doesn't take much looking to find his own words recognizing the "darker side" you reference.

[lugsoul]

"I received, through Mr. Warden, the copy of your valuable work on the French Revolution, for which I pray you to accept my thanks. That its sale should have been suppressed is no matter of wonder with me. The friend of liberty is too feelingly manifested, not to give umbrage to its enemies. We read in it, and weep over, the fatal errors which have lost to nations the present hope of liberty, and to reason for fairest prospect of its final triumph over all imposture, civil and religious. The testimony of one who himself was an actor in the scenes he notes, and who knew the true mean between rational liberty and the frenzies of demagogy, are a tribute to truth of inestimable value. The perusal of this work has given me new views of the causes of failure in a revolution of which I was a witness in its early part, and then augured well of it. I had no means, afterwards, of observing its progress but the public papers, and their information came through channels too hostile to claim confidence. An acquaintance with many of the principal characters, and with their fate, furnished me grounds for conjectures, some of which you have confirmed, and some corrected. Shall we ever see as free and faithful a tableau of subsequent acts of this deplorable tragedy?"

"fatal errors". "frenzies of demagogy". "deplorable tragedy." It doesn't take much looking to find his own words recognizing the "darker side" you reference.

[Mark in the Old South]

Isn't education grand? I'm glad you are learning something.

[angcat]

LOL LOL I did learn something!

[Mark in the Old South]

Well keep on learning just don't expect "hands on training" This isn't the Democratic Underground after all.

[razorback-bert]

Wasn't M. de Sade a prisoner there then, my memory is hazy?

[angcat]

I will follow up with her tonight about more facts. No hands on training! :)

[Snickersnee]

And wasn't the American Revolution the Revolution of Revolutions?

"Evolution" is a better term for it. When we became "Americans" sometime in the first half of the XVIII Cen., it was all over for the Crown but the shouting (and shooting, 1775-1783.) There was no Bastille or battleship Potemkin. It was as if one generation of us had gone to sleep and the next had awakened and said: "By George, George -- I'm an American!"

[lizma]

Some here wanted to make Washington king. He said no. He understood and believed in what he helped create.

[Borges]

He was transffered from the Bastille to Charenton a couple of weeks before the Storming. Apparently he just escaped the guillotine during the Reign of Terror by writing an admiring eulogy of Marat.