Posted on 01/18/2005 9:44:13 AM PST by 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.
It also marked the beginning of a few other things:
- passports
-"total war" (War involving the entire population of a nation)
-the draft
-hotel registration (you know, when you check into a hotel/motel you have to give your name, etc.)
-books required to list the name of the author, publisher, the date & place printed.
-the restaurant. (Not just an inn or bar that serves food, but a place whose only purpose is to serve food. This came about b/c with the Revolution a lot of privates chefs found themselves w/o employment or employers.)
- the terms "the right", "the left" and "the center", all referring to where the conservatives, the liberals, the the undecided sat in the Assembly Hall.
- the rise of the 4th estate (the press) and its ability/desire to influence politics.
The interesting thing about you highlighting the 17th item, which seems to mirror the takings clause of the 5th Amendment, is that their similarity probably ends with the language - the French provision was a reaction to a very specific old regime abuse - the taking of property by the Church and the nobility - rather than an ideal of the manner in which property rights would be secured. It is important to note that, with their background in a feudal society, the French had a very different conception of private property than did the Americans.
I actually did a research paper on this topic in grad school. My conclusion was that, while some provisions in the DRMC were directly influenced by corresponding provisions in the Bill of Rights, the property provision was completely unrelated to the takings clause.
I agree. Marx was a 'good journalist' but he didn't know squat about economics or human nature. He saw problems and devised simplistic solutions based emotion and complete ignorance of the dynamics that created those problems. The shame was that he was such a good writer that some people thought he knew what he was talking about.
"It's not that multiples of 10 is a bad idea, it's that the basic sizes just don't "feel" right."
Which is only because we have grown up and been educated in a society that uses the far-more-convoluted English system.
The metric system is more logical and easier to understand; however, I'm more familiar with the English version and thus ignorantly prefer it.
You pretty much were, although I'd trace the very beginning of liberalism to the proto-Nominalism of William of Occam.
Actually Marx was a terrible writer! I think the issue is that people simply read what they wanted to read into his muddle. I suppose there is some value in the idea of a beauracratic tiered factory where the worker becomes 'alientated' from his work. The origin of the modern cubicle bound drones. but Marx's solution was to extend those conditions to everyone....create the equivalent of a Corporate slave state.
I found myself amazed at the 'revolutionaires'
and their clear similarity to liberals today- totalitarian control of the press, destruction of all enemies, real or imagined, and and obsession with destroying and removing all religion from society and replacing themselves as the 'supreme beings'. I also found myself amazed at the fact that our own founding fathers were able to stage a revolution and not become drunk and corrupt with power like the French revolutionaries unfortunately did. The outcome would have been totally different for our country.
Abuses by King John caused a revolt by nobles who compelled him to execute this recognition of rights for both noblemen and ordinary Englishmen. It established the principle that no one, including the king or a lawmaker, is above the law.
http://www.constitution.org/eng/magnacar.htm
The thesis/antithesis-->synthesis thing works well with describing som things, but not truth itself.
Like most modern philosophers, Hegel never turns the gun on himself. Is Hegel's philosophy part of the historical process? If so, then it can't be ultimately and absolutely true. His theory would have to be historically dependent and contingent.
If I learned one thing from this program, it was that when the ELITES of the world get out of control, THE PEOPLE will react.
Perhaps we need to "French Revolutionize" the NY Times?
I'll say! This guy was crazier than an out-house rat.
He confesses that as a teen he got his kick out of exposing his heinie to unsuspecting lasses and that he was often tempted to do and did...er,things...that he said parents should make sure their sons don't lie too long in bed in the morning....
That his (politely clears throat)"housekeeper" could neither read, write, didn't know the days or weeks or months of the year, could not count much beyond ten, and while she remained as his "housekeeper" for 20+ years and took her with him everywhere, whenever he went to a "Serious Supper Party" (a.k.a. High Society) he made her eat -- and stay --in the kitchen.
Over the course of years she also bore him 5 children, everyone of which he promptly dumped off at the door of the nearest orphanage. And while he never forgot these children (nor much time thinking about them), he never did anything to ever try and recover them. And, yup, this is the guy that proposed to tell the world how to raise children.
The list goes on and on. But,seriously, if you want to get a good over view of man, his peers and the whole French Revolution era I suggest picking up a used copy of Will Durant's "The Story of Civilization: Vol. X "Rousseau & Revolution" I know you can pick it up on in the used book section of Amazon for less than $5, hardcover.
Does the criticism of the King's extravagant parties remind you of any criticism of anything in the news?
Sorry History Channel, I could not come to love the Frogs, even for two hours.
This is the libertarian (libertine) credo which decriminalizes all consensual vice.
6. Law is the expression of the general will.
This is socialism or a kind of proto-Marxism.
Libertinism and socialism are complementary rather than contradictory. The seeds of modernism were sewn here.
Bump for later.
Well, it couldn't have been much given the hauteur of the French, and the fact that Jefferson couldn't speak (fluent) French.
No, in this regard Jefferson, IMHO, was more like a love-smitten school boy, for he was there to see only the beginning of the Revolution when it was still brights and shinning...and for the rest of his life refused to admit that it ever had a darker side. Sort of like early-mid 20th c. American communists and USSR.
The Hegelian dialectic is the favored tool of the race-baiters and poverty pimps. You're a Racist! (Thesis), No I'm not! (Antithesis) Prove it then! (Synthesis)
Don't confuse left-wing with liberalism. The classical Western liberalism of the enlightenment which put Natural Law at the foundation is the antithesis of left-wing ideology which puts state control at the center.
I'd also point out that the inspiration for the American Revolution was more based on Locke and Burke and the Scottish enlightenment and very much a revolution of thought. The French Revolution, for understandable reasons, was much more resentment driven without widespread ideological or philosophical pretext and hence, beyond the slogans, lacked a unifying thread.
I'm grateful for Therese of Liseux and Joan of Arc, anyway.
My mom was telling me about this before I had my coffee this morning. I do remember her telling me someone had a crooked private part!
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