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.

[Rppoulin]

I'd had it with The History Channel's excess of commercials as well, Smarty, so I went out and got a DVR box from my cable company. It costs about $10 extra per month and it comes with HD capabilities. Now I record the shows I want to watch during their rebroadcast hours of Midnight to 3AM and blow through them later. Makes all the difference. I highly recommend it.

[Charlotte Corday]

A pretty good program all round, especially glad that my namesake was treated with the respect due her.

Hard to do the subject justice in two hours. The only real issues I had were the too-favorable treatment of Danton (a more personally likable character than Robespierre or St. Just, but ideologically very near as bad), and the failure to cover the Vendee rising of 17summer '93.

The comments up-thread that this was the first real communist goverment are well taken. Lenin said in so many words that the Bolsheviks had to be "the Jacobins of today".

[Petronski]

I only mean to say that I personally have only heard the dialectical buzzwords in the context of Marxism. If other's use it, it's news to me.

[Sloth]

13. A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.

Ouch, there goes progressive taxation! I wonder if Eric Engberg would have called the Rights of Man a 'wacky' proposal.

[Borges]

Well Hegel coined the 'dialectic' as far as I know. They call it the 'Hegelian dialectic'. But he meant it only as the progress of ideas. Marx applied it to material world and decided it was not ideas but economic classes that were fighting it out.

[Truthsayer20]

"Absolutely, they were products of The Enlightenment, but I don't think "left-wing" is an accurate description of the political component of The Enlightenment."

Well, I believe the origins of the left-right division are from the time of the French Revolution when the proponents of the Ancien Régime sat on the right side of the French National Assembly while the revolutionaries of the Third Estate sat on the left.

[hosepipe]

Mark Twain while in Paris commenting on the French Revolution.. said;...

"There are three forms of life on earth.. The highest form of life are the plants becuase they are so attuned to their enviornment, the next lowest form of life are the animals includeing humans becuase of predation, but the lowest form of life on earth is the Frenchmen becuase of the terrible things they have done to their own people.. "
(paraphrased)

[Yardstick]

The most famous instrument of the French revolution was the guillotine. The most famous instrument of the US revolution was a piece of paper.

Isn't that the truth. In contrast to the American revolution, the French revolution was a violent absurdity. And isn't it interesting how it led directly to the emperorship of Napoleon? -- a foreshadowing of the Russian "people's" revolution which led to the dictatorship of Lenin and Stalin and the rest of the soviet Czars. This is a pattern that has repeated itself again and again. It reveals a lot about the true nature of socialism, which is elitist and authoritarian.

[NeoCaveman]

I've often thought that we as Americans should apologize for putting a really bad idea in the heads of the French.

I hope to catch this History Channel show on rerun.

[captain_dave]

The worst thing about the French Revolution is it gave birth to the Metric System. The Metric System is crap and bull. Sure, everything is a multiple of 10, but the basic units are either too small or too big. Also, the units are not based on Man, but "scientifically" on the size of the Earth, or sum such thing. Look - we, Mankind, measure thing, not the dog next store, or the cat down the street. I'll stay with inches and feet.

Besides, the metric system was invented by the French. That enough of a reason to despise it.

[Loyal Buckeye]

I watched all but the last 15 minutes. Did it have a happy ending?

[Truthsayer20]

"I failed to read about the American version of mass executions by beheading in Boston public square."

I believe the American Revolutions stopped at the correct point while French ultimately went to the wrong direction with Robespierre, the Reign of Terror and extreme anti-clericalism. This doesn't, however, change the fact that the ideological origins of both initial revolutions have a lot in common.

[Cincinatus]

It was a "straight" documentary, more or less. They used actors in costume to portray Robespierre, Marat, Danton, Marie Antoinette and Louis, but they had no "speaking parts" -- they just acted out events described in the narration.

Don't worry -- History Channel always repeats their original programing. This one will get a re-airing, no doubt. Check out their website for dates and times.

[dfwgator]

I'm just glad we never adopted the metric alphabet.

[jpl]

The American and French revolutions have a lot more in common than many American conservatives are willing to admit. They were both products of the Enlightenment and, from a contemporary point-of-view, left-wing in their outlook. Of course, royalist and anti-Enlightenment conservatism has never really existed in America.

I would call Tom Paine the closest thing we had at the time to a leftist French-style revolutionary here in America, especially in regards to his fierce opposition to all religion. Fortunately for us, Ben Franklin and the overwhelming majority of the Founders were never quite willing to go this far.

[lilylangtree]

Saw it advertised but didn't watch. Disgusted with the line: "Even you got to love the French for two hours."

[Logic n' Reason]

Marie Antoinette was a real hottie tho...

[Swanks]

The King's elite guards are overun by pissed off peasant (but strong) fish ladies. Are beheaded and paraded around Paris. Suppose not much has changed in 210 years regarding France' elite military.

[headsonpikes]

Jacob Talmon's 'The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy' elegantly connects the dots between Rousseau and his brother French philosophes and their German Idealist successors, Hegel and Marx.

Not to mention the more existential connection of the French Revolution to Stalin, Pol Pot, and the other modern wholesalers of socialism and genocide.

The American and French Revolutions are competitors historically and intellectually, not allies.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Great thread and I agree with most of what has already been said on this thread. Looks like there will be chances to view or Tivo this program as I think it's going to be repeated this Saturday from 8 to 10 PM, Sunday AM from 12-2 AM and next Saturday from 9 to 11PM. http://www.historychannel.com/global/listings/listings_search.jsp