Free Republic

Politicians have an old joke – maybe too truthful and unfunny to be called a joke – about the politician who sees a crowd marching along, and mutters to himself, “I’d better find out where they’re going, so I can wriggle my way to the front and lead them there.” This date in history, August 26, holds a worthwhile lesson on this subject. It was on August 26, 1789, when the Marquis de Lafayette and the Abbe Saiyes (allegedly with lots of advice from the USA ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson), published their Declaration of the Rights of Man and...

The most famous fiasco in literary history occurred when Thomas Carlyle gave John Stuart Mill the first part of his great work The French Revolution to critique. Mill’s maid thought the manuscript was wastepaper and threw it into the fire. The loss was total. Carlyle had no copy. Carlyle and his formidable wife, Jane, were newly arrived in London from Scotland, with scant savings in their purse. The loss of the book, and its anticipated revenue, threatened them with ruin. Carlyle (who had just been introduced to high society, and was keeping company with grandees such as Mill and Wordsworth)...

the genuinely privileged class in America’s big cities consists of radical progressives, who flout mask requirements at mass demonstrations, deface public property with graffiti, and riot and destroy while being called “mostly peaceful demonstrators.” ... The two rioters grabbed national attention when they were arrested because of their elite and privileged backgrounds. ... Colinford Mattis.. embodies elite credentials via affirmative action, “plucked” in Miller’s word, from East New York and educated at elite St. Andrew’s prep, Princeton (where he was a member of two elite eating clubs), and NYU Law. Urooj Rahman, born in Pakistan and brought to the USA...

Many recently celebrated Bastille Day, the day French radical revolutionaries stormed a prison, released its prisoners, and brutally murdered the warden. That fateful day, now more than 200 years ago, set in motion a revolution that led to bloodshed and a devastating loss of liberty in France. It also set the precedent for many future revolutions that took an unbelievable toll on human life.Contemporary British politician Edmund Burke lamented that French Revolutionaries could have repaired the walls of their government and society instead of tearing them down. In an attempt to found an egalitarian utopia, the French Revolutionaries tore...

The people of France celebrate July 14, Bastille Day, remembering a significant day during their country’s hideous 18th century leftist revolution, which guillotined or otherwise murdered pretty much anyone the revolution’s leaders—the misnamed Committee of Public Safety—wanted permanently “cancelled.” However, for those who don’t want a “progressive” Reign of Terror to sweep across America like it did in France, today, July 28, is a much more appropriate anniversary to celebrate.Here are just a few of the many reasons why.In the summer of 1793, France’s Jacobin political club, which dominated the Paris Commune and for which a New York-based leftist magazine is...

July 27th, 1794 — the 9th of Thermidor, year II — is inscribed in history as the day Robespierre fell, when a parliamentary coup d’etat between the right and the remnants of the parties he had destroyed shouted him down as he readied the National Convention for his next purge...Even as the month of Thermidor’s eponymous epochal event was unfolding, the daily gears of Revolutionary justice were turning: the usual haul of unfortunates condemned, including seven women from the previous day’s batch of Saint Lazare prison conspirators who had pled their bellies to buy a day. That day was one...

The Final Days of the Carmelites of Compiegne On February 13, 1790, France, the eldest daughter of the Church, forbade the taking of religious vows.A little over two years later, in September 1792, a Carmelite convent about 50 miles north of Paris was seized. The nuns were forced to live separately, and to abandon their habits. In his book To Quell the Terror, William Bush tells us that the revolutionaries deemed habits “offensive to republican eyes,” an echo of Protestant reformers some 300 years earlier: “The reformers focused especially on religious habits, ripping them to shreds or burning them, ordering...

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...

In 1781, 27-year-old King Louis XVI of France sent his navy and troops to help America gain independence from Britain. In return, France gained very little, except an enormous amount of debt. On the verge of financial collapse, France then experienced a terrible famine in 1788. The people blamed the King. Anti-monarchists referred to Queen Marie Antoinette as Madame Déficit. According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, when she was told the people did not have bread, her reply was: "Let them eat cake." On July 14, 1789, an anarchist mob went through the streets of Paris and stormed the the Bastille Fortress...

Some left-leaning journalists — including an editor at The New York Times — defended the French Revolution after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) suggested that the Democratic primary upsets on Tuesday led in part by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) showed that something like the French Revolution was taking place in that party. Their defenses of the French Revolution led to stern rebukes from those who remember how that revolution ended up.

he promise of bloodshed coming alongside or following shortly after is an historic certainty. The symbols of a people never satisfy: People themselves must always come next. WASHINGTON, DC — For millennia, King Mob has targeted societies’ icons with varied goals and to varied ends, and few things are more foreboding than his desecration of civic art. Just as the targets have ranged from rulers to clergy, from tyrants to helpless, and from the guilty to the innocent, the outcomes have ranged from victory to defeat depending on the society’s strength and will. The promise of bloodshed coming alongside or...

At first glance, the new nationalism of conservatives will seem benign and even uncontroversial. In his book “The Case for Nationalism,” Rich Lowry defines nationalism as flowing from a people’s “natural devotion to their home and to their country.” Yoram Hazony, in his book “The Virtue of Nationalism,” also has a rather anodyne definition of nationalism. It means “that the world is governed best when nations agree to cultivate their own traditions, free from interference by other nations.” There is nothing particularly controversial at all about these statements. Defined in these terms, it sounds like little more than simply defending...

After his education, he was commissioned in the French military in 1785, and quickly advanced. Napoleon's expertise in the use of mobile artillery and the military tactics of "envelopment" and "divide and conquer" resulted in him becoming one of the greatest military commanders of all time. Beginning in 1792, France experienced a Reign of Terror. King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were were beheaded in 1793. When the French Revolution began, Napoleon was an artillery officer. In April of 1795, Napoleon was ordered to help smash a counter-revolution of Catholic royalists in War in the Vendée. Napoleon claimed to...

Tocqueville: on America, Algeria, & How "despotism" of "all powerful government" comes when citizens "debase" their souls seeking "vulgar pleasures"Alexis de Tocqueville was born JULY 29, 1805. A French social scientist, he traveled the United States in 1831, and wrote a two-part work, Democracy in America (1835; 1840), which has been described as: "the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the relationship between character and society in America that has ever been written." In it, Tocqueville wrote: "Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT- MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14 Religion Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. In the history of secular beliefs, and in the rise of modern atheism, no country is more important than France, and no city is more important than Paris. The French Revolution, which began here in 1789 really marks the beginning...

Through the early years of the French Revolution most American’s had perceived events in France as a product of their own revolutionary ideals, namely, promising the benefits of liberty and a written constitution to all mankind. But as France edged closer to war with the rest of Europe, the neutrality of the United States was becoming ever more complicated as American citizens began to take sides, urging President Washington to choose between France and Britain. The federalists saw a profound difference between the experience of the French Revolution and American Revolution. In France they saw radicalisation, social anarchy and the...

George Washington refused to come to the rescue when the pamphleteer who put him on his high horse faced the guillotine... Citizen Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet Common Sense helped ignite the American Revolution, was an enthusiastic early supporter of the French Revolution. He received a hero’s welcome when he arrived in Paris in 1792 and was even granted honorary French citizenship and a seat in the National Convention, the body charged with writing a constitution for the new republic. But Paine angered Maximilien Robespierre and other Jacobin extremists when he urged the Convention to spare the life of the deposed...

I consider myself an amateur historian, though some of my readers might place more emphasis on the amateur than historian.  One thing that has puzzled me is why different results sprang from the American and French Revolutions.  It might have something to tell us for today. On the surface reading, the American and French Revolutions seem to hold similar ideals. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness does not seem that far removed from Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité.  And if one says the American slogan does not mention equality, the Declaration of Independence surely does. We hold these truths to be self-evident:...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks at an event in Claremont, N.H., January 18, 2019. (Brian Snyder/Reuters) Elizabeth Warren is not proposing a tax; she’s proposing asset forfeiture.History is very short, if you look at it the right way. The American Revolution seems like it was a very long time ago, but looked at with the right kind of eyes, it was the day before yesterday: The revolution of Washington and Jefferson inspired the French Revolution, which unhappily perverted the classical-liberal principles of the American Founders and created instead an ersatz religion purporting to be a cult of pure reason —...

Macron on the Brink: Water Cannon, Tear Gas, and Stun Grenades as ‘Yellow Jackets’ Storm Security Cordons(Full Title) Riot police have deployed water cannon, tear gas, and stun grenades against protesters on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, France, as the “Yellow Jackets” stage their third major rally against President Emmanuel Macron’s “green” tax hikes on fuel. The clashes on the famous avenue leading to Napoleon Bonaparte’s iconic Arc de Triomphe come as Macron is in Argentina for the G20, threatening to disrupt a planned trade deal between the European Union and South America’s Mercosur bloc over a disagreement with Brazil’s new...