Why Robespierre Chose Terror - The lessons of the first totalitarian revolution

City Journal ^ | Apr 16, 2006 | John Kekes

[Cincinna]

Loved "humanity" but hated people. How typical of all these totalitarian types.

The roots of the V Republic in the Terror explain much of what is happening in France today. Mob rule.

So many innocent people were slaughtered under Robespierre. It is said that the guillotine in the Place de Revolution, now la Place de la Concorde in central Paris ran 24/7 for almost a year.

Our great American hero, Lafayette, lost his entire family to the terror. His in-laws in their 80's were marched to the guillotine and executed in the name of Liberté,Egalité,Fraternité.

[Earthdweller]

Well I may be part French but it has be over 200 years since anyone I know has spoken it here...LOL.

I have been having a really hard time relearning it.

[Cincinna]

Excellent point. Never forget that one of the main credos of the French Revolution was anti- church. Atheist,anti-Christian,anti-church.

Churches were sacked and pillaged, clerics tortured and executed. What a wonderful world they created.

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

The Act of Choosing a "Side"

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Fascinating post. Your own Op-Ed? If not, do you know whose?

[Cincinna]

"Plus ça change, plus ça reste la meme chose"

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

[Earthdweller]

Ok..everyone knows it but me. I hang my head in humiliation..hehehe. It is so true.

[Earthdweller]

Mine.

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

Well done.

Thanks.

[nopardons]

I only had a few years of it in high school, but I can still do pretty well on a rather pathetically low level. LOL

Bon chance, with your attempt to learn/relearn it.

[Earthdweller]

Gads..High school? I've been trying to learn it on my own. For some reason I have a unexplainable block. Guess I had better get a tutor. Are you available? LOL :)

[nopardons]

Well, I also had to talk French, for a 1/2 hour a day, at the after school group ( during milk and cookies ) I went to, in my grammar school years, but that was mostly just please and thank you and stuff like that.

I really would HATE to tell you just how long it's been, since I was in high school. LOL

Learning any language, after a certain age, is extremely difficult. Our brains are set up to learn any and all languages, easily, up to around 16. After that, it gets harder and harder and harder.

Have you tried records/tapes?

Did you take any languages in high school and college?

[Earthdweller]

I know Spanish and German but don't know any Germans or Spaniards.. Hehehe.

Now I have new friends in France who would like for me to learn French. They are very pro-American people who are interested in moving to the US.

I'm using tapes but it doesn't seem to be helping. I really don't want to take a class at this late stage but it looks like I might have to.

Thanks for the input.

[Beckwith]

You might want to read this:

Hitler Was a Socialist

[nothingnew]

For the Communists, it was a classless society; for the Nazis, racial purity; for Islamic terrorists, their interpretation of the Koran. The shared feature is that the ideal, according to its true believers, is immune from rational or moral criticism, because it determines what is reasonable and moral.

'Nuff said. Sums it up for me. It's a lot like what's going right here, right now, without the massive bloodshed.

Pinged myself for further read.

FMCDH(BITS)

[Coleus]

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: French Revolution

 

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: John Dubois

[pravknight]

All I have to say is that Thomas Jefferson was a big admirer of the French Revolution, but Alexander Hamilton saw it for what it was.

My family suffered terribly in the French Revolution, and one of our family members, a noble bishop in Lorraine was guillotined for his faith. My French grandmother's family descends from French nobility dating back to the time of Charlemagne.

I hate the French Republic with all my heart. Vive le Roi!!!

I just wish I could have a nice French royalist demonstration outside the French embassy just to tick off those arrogant French Republicans. How about Bastille Day?

Here is the true flag of France: http://www.flagline.com/id01140127

St. Louis IX pray for us. Remember the Martyrs of the Vendee at the hands of the (French) Republican butchers.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/revolt_in_the_vend%C3%A9e

[beckett]

Robbespierre is mostly unmentionable today among polite circles on the left, although it so happens there was a book review about him just posted on Arts and Letters Daily, --- here ---, which tries to be as sympathetic as possible to the man, and the book reviewed, from what I can tell, also appears to cast him in a sympathetic light.

But although all those severed heads make it hard for the left to justify Robbespierre too well, they never tire of mentioning Rousseau, who undoubtedly would have been up to his elbows in blood right alongside his disciple had he been born a few decades later. The ideological content and temperamental disposition of both men -- if not, in Robbespierre's case, the man himself -- are still passionately defended on the left.