More like “‘La Difference’ Delenda Est”.
To be perfectly fair to the French revolutionaries, something I’m not particularly fond of being, America had it easy.
The French had to put their Revolution through in the teeth of massive foreign invasion and armed domestic resistance. We were at peace when we worked up our Constitution.
That said, I basically agree with the author. Every bad political notion of the last 200 years was given a road show tryout in the French Revolution.
I would also object to the author’s contention that the eventual triumph of democracy in France was due to Enlightenment principles. The problem here is that every single one of the French revolutionaries thought he was implementing the Enlightenment, and ready to kill anyone who had a different opinion on how to go about it. This was the French Enlightenment. Voltaire, Rousseau and that bunch.
The American Revolution, OTOH, was largely based on English and Scottish Enlightenment principles. Two very different kettles of fish.
Ann Barnhardt has something to say about the French Revolution, and it’s not flattering.
liberty, equality and fraternity became
liberty, equality and fraternity or death
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaMLoLtFn6s&feature=player_embedded
French Revolution= epic failure. 5 republics, interspersed with several dictatorships. And winding up with socialism to boot.
They didn’t heed Nadison’s warning:
“In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we should not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. An increase of population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings. These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former. No agrarian attempts have yet been made in this country, but symptoms of a leveling spirit, as we have understood, have sufficiently appeared in a certain quarters to give notice of the future danger.”
Their revolution was not the creation of something new, as ours was, but a mere redistribution of the existing feudal wealth and powers.
As all systems but ours are.
Theirs was in the 1700’s...
Ours is next year!
It was such a disaster Napolean Bonaparte was a breath of fresh air.
Yes, the modern political tragedy started in France.
Got to fly - see tagline.
One crucial difference between the French and American revolutions is that the French revolutionaries killed their wealthy aristocrats, and then fought over the division of the loot. In the American revolution, it was property owners (even a small farmer was a property owner) who wanted to prevent the Crown from taxing them dry.