Two Revolutions, Two Views of Man

Conservative Underground | July 6, 2010 | Jean F. Drew

[betty boop]

FYI —

America doesn't have an established church. But she clearly does have a Christian heritage! Indeed, that heritage lies back of the American concept of unalienable individual rights.... This is what makes the American Revolution so utterly unlike the French....

[reasonisfaith]

Thanks for the excellent analysis and the historical details. Seems to be right on target.

I’ll have to print and spend a lot more time with it.

[wideawake]

Actually there are quite a few factors that made the French Revolution different. For one, the colonists were separating from the mother country, while the revolutionaries were overthrowing their government.

[NittanyLion]

Very interesting and insightful - thanks for posting. I’m currently in the middle of a book that explores the 1790’s from the perspective of France, America and Russia. From my perspective this is “spot on”.

[betty boop]

FYI!!!

[betty boop]

Actually there are quite a few factors that made the French Revolution different. For one, the colonists were separating from the mother country, while the revolutionaries were overthrowing their government.

Thank you so much for the insight. Of course you're right about this, wideawake!

[wideawake]

It should also be noted that the supremacy of the Pope over the French Church was very controversial in France - the Gallicanist movement was still raging. This is why the revolutionaries demanded that the clergy swear an oath repudiating the Pope and giving their complete allegiance to the state - and why they targeted and martyred the anti-Gallican clergy first. There was no freedom of religion for orthodox Catholics either in revolutionary France or royal England.

[betty boop]

Oh drat, I just noticed my superscripts to the endnotes didn't make it into the text.... Though the endnotes are there, they don't point you to the place in the text to which they refer.

I'm so sorry!

[wideawake]

Overall, this is a pretty tight article - the quotations are particularly well-chosen.

[Yardstick]

*Bump*

I’ve gotten to the point where see the French Revolution as kind of an abomination.

[YHAOS]

Thanks for the beep! Glad you thought of me.

[betty boop]

Thanks so much, wideawake, for giving us this wider perspective on the situation in France!

[JimSEA]

You have a major point there. If you look at 19th and 20th century revolutions, those where people overthrew their on government (and historical culture) seldom ended well. Russia, Mexico, China and so many more. Too many were co-opted by Marxists or Fascists.

[FrdmLvr]

The roots of Marxism/Communism were in the ideology of the French Revolution, specifically Robspierre's Reign of Terror where war was waged on the people and on civilization by the government (established after the death of the King and the royalty) to reduce the population. They began arresting the clergy, too.

There is no comparison between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. It angers me that children are taught the American and French Revolutions were ideologically parallell.

[betty boop]

I’ve gotten to the point where see the French Revolution as kind of an abomination.

Me too, Yardstick; me too.

Thanks so much for writing!

[betty boop]

Thank you for your kind words, reasonisfaith!

[betty boop]

Thank you so much for your kind words, NittanyLion!

[marron]

“…We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire... Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers...”

I love Burke. I just read through his "French Revolution" just this past month.

The currently sitting American president seems to be an activist of the French model. He is distinctly a post-modernist thinker, as an analysis of his words vis-à-vis his actions will show. Evidently he has no sympathy for the values, principles, and goals of the American Revolution, and has disparaged the Constitution — to which he freely swore an Oath of fidelity — on grounds that it is a system of negative liberties” that has outlived its usefulness.

Negative liberties are the very key to liberty. The fact that Obama rejects them reveals him as a jacobin, who sees your liberty as something to be overcome as he accumulates the power to implement his vision. Protecting your right to build your vision is for him not the purpose of government, as it was for Locke, it is an impediment to Obama implementing Obama's vision.

You have captured the essence of the current mob of vandals who have captured the congress and the White House. They create nothing, they know only how to overturn. Americans do not know the difference between Locke and Rousseau and it is all the difference in the world. It is the difference between a system based on liberty and a system based on the accumulation of power. The jacobins and obamists know only the accumulation of power. They do not love liberty, they smother it in its crib where ever they find it.

Excellent writing, as usual.

[betty boop]

The roots of Marxism/Communism were in the ideology of the French Revolution, specifically Robspierre's Reign of Terror where war was waged on the people and on civilization by the government.... There is no comparison between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. It angers me that children are taught the American and French Revolutions were ideologically parallell.

I couldn't agree with you more, FrdmLvr! Thanks so much for writing!