Posted on 07/14/2020 12:13:16 PM PDT by TBP
Compared to the American Revolution, the French Revolution is very disappointing to libertarians. Compared to the Russian Revolution, it looks pretty good. And it also looks good, at least in the long view, compared to the ancien regime that preceded it.
Conservatives typically follow Edmund Burke’s critical view in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. They may even quote John Adams: “Helvetius and Rousseau preached to the French nation liberty, till they made them the most mechanical slaves; equality, till they destroyed all equity; humanity, till they became weasels and African panthers; and fraternity, till they cut one another’s throats like Roman gladiators.”
The economic causes of the French Revolution are sometimes insufficiently appreciated. In his book The French Revolution: An Economic Interpretation, Florin Aftalion outlines some of those causes. The French state engaged in wars throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. To pay for the wars, it employed complex and burdensome taxation, tax farming, borrowing, debt repudiation and forced “disgorgement” from the financiers, and debasement of the currency. Lord Acton wrote that people had been anticipating revolution in France for a century. And revolution came.
Liberals and libertarians admired the fundamental values it represented. Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek both hailed “the ideas of 1789” and contrasted them with “the ideas of 1914” — that is, liberty versus state‐directed organization.
(Excerpt) Read more at cato.org ...
I'm struck by the resemblance to the modern progressive state.
All socialists are the same.
“All socialists are the same.”
Pretty much so.
Jefferson was as wrong as can he about the French Revolution. Washington, and Adam’s and Hamilton were right.
Anyone interested in this thread needs to see this Bill Whittle video. It’s what they are attempting today. But they don’t have the power. The right is too strong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dwz_Z62e0s
It was the American Revolution that set off all the revolutions that have followed and most of those were subverted and perverted by those who really want the old regime only with themselves on the throne.
The French Revolution was based on selfish and sinful humanism, revenge, greed, lust, narcissism, backed up by violence and terror.
That was an excellent video by Bill Whittle. The fundamental difference between capitalist vs. communist world view.
Unfortunately for the French monarchy that supported our war for independence, those soldiers returned to France with a whole bunch of new ideas.
Indeed. Worst thing about Jefferson, or least tied with the Embargo act.
One would have to give some credit to Englands Glorious Revolution.
What’s even more sad is that he was wrong despite actually being there at the time it was starting out, while his contemporaries were right about it despite not actually setting foot into the country during that time. So much for the conventional wisdom of “You have to actually see it to have a good grasp of what’s going on”.
Quite frankly, it’s because of his support for the Jacobins up to and including the Reign of Terror that I’m NOT fond of Jefferson at all.
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