Posted on 07/28/2020 7:53:20 AM PDT by Kaslin
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 grotesquely named, declared “terror the order of the day.” Committee member Jean-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne gloated, “In profiting from the energy of the people, we shall at last exterminate the enemies of the Revolution.” The president of the Commune, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, who led the revolution’s effort to destroy Christianity, declared “Let us throw between us and them the barrier of eternity!”
Billaud-Varenne, also anti-Christian, proposed seizing property from the Catholic church, and subjecting the church and its teachings to the government. Certain that only his viewpoint was worth considering, he said, “a vile interest, seconded by a stupid ignorance, may still dare to rise up against so advantageous a reform; but its motives will be too contemptible for anyone to give ear to its clamor. The only cry to be listened to is that which takes for device Conscience and Truth.”
Lyons, a major industrial center in France, had been resisting the revolution, so in October, the Committee decreed: “The city of Lyons shall be destroyed. Every habitation of the rich shall be demolished; there shall remain only the homes of the poor . . . . On the ruins of Lyons shall be raised a column . . . with this inscription: ‘Lyons made war on liberty. Lyons is no more.”
The first Committee member sent to oversee Lyons’ destruction, Georges Couthon, another enemy of the Catholic church, ordered the city’s inhabitants disarmed. Soon, Couthon’s task in Lyon was assumed by Committee member Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois, an ex-actor, described by the late R. R. Palmer, Professor Emeritus of History at Yale, as a “vehement, emotional and vulgar man, craving the center of the stage, dramatizing and gesticulating and bellowing when excited,” like fake Tejano Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke. “The Jacobins have every virtue,” Collot declared. “They are compassionate, humane, generous; but they reserve all these feelings for the patriots who are their brothers.”
Collot was assisted by Joseph Fouché, an ally in Chaumette’s war on Christianity who became known as “The Executioner of Lyons.” For several days beginning on December 4 (14 Frimaire on the revolutionary calendar, the Committee having renamed the calendar to signal the revolution’s break with the past) about 360 Lyonese were killed by grapeshot fired from cannon or, if they survived the salvo, by being hacked to death with swords. Reporting the slaughter to the Committee, one of its operatives wrote “May this festival forever impress terror upon the souls of rascals . . . . [Y]es, festival is the word. When crime (opposition to the revolution) descends to the grave, humanity breathes again and it is the festival of virtue.” Another fanatic reported on one day’s murders, “What delight you would have tasted if you had seen, day before yesterday, the national justice (execution) upon two hundred and nine scoundrels (anti-revolutionaries). What majesty!”
On June 10 (22 Prairial), the Committee passed a law denying “suspects” a public trial and the right to counsel. Leftists always hating Christianity because its followers consider God’s law above that imposed by leftists, on July 17, 1794, the revolution guillotined 16 Carmelite nuns, lay sisters, and externs who refused to discontinue their religious activities. In a display of incredible courage, the doomed women sang Salve Regina as they marched, one by one, to the scaffold. The scene is portrayed in this version of Francis Poulenc’s opera, Dialogues des Carmélites, with the role of the prioress, Madame Ledoine, Mother Teresa of St. Augustine, sung by the late, very great, Jessye Norman.
However, after 17,000 murders that they thought were just fine, the guillotining of the Martyrs of Compiègne was too much for the French. On July 28, 1794, Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Couthon fell to the “National Razor” they had wielded against others, ending the Terror. Today’s aspiring Jacobins would do well to remember.
Another good thing to remember is that all their terror and destruction bought them a 20+ year-long bloodbath.
Under Napoleon I, a lot was accomplished. But in the end, he demanded and GOT a French hereditary dynasty... all Bonapart’s and just like the one that it took 2 million Frenchmen to unseat, in the first place.
At the coronation of Napoleon I, Marshal Ney sat in the pew and said loudly enough for all to hear: “Two million Frenchmen
died to put an end to this s#*t!”
This old saying is also worth remembering: After Lenin comes Stalin.
If you are a communist and are so inclined, you can credit Lenin for bringing down the old czarist system. But after Lenin came Stalin. Stalin murdered most of Lenin’s associates. And he murdered most of the early Central Committee members.
The little Bolsheviks who are running around today had best remember something. There are Stalins in their midst. And if given the chance, today’s Stalins would kill as ruthlessly as the original one did.
Sorry, but this article gives a POOR accounting of how today’s leftists are going down the road of the French Reign of Terror.
Rioters can’t even remember what they smoked for lunch the day before, let alone the French Revolution.
Bill Whittle has been my most admired Living conservative for some years now, though the works of Thomas Sowell had kept Dr. Sowell up there for years.
I have seen nearly everything Bill Whittle has produced, but never saw this video.
I have read (and I just had to go to his bibliography and count them!) 11 books by Thomas Sowell, and up to about two months ago, I had never read “The Vision of The Anointed”...brilliant. It is finely in line with his philosophy expressed in his other books, but listening to him expand on it (I have to do audiobooks now...I can’t read much) was educational and made his other books even more readable.
To hear Bill Whittle, my favorite Conservative, talk at length about one of the signal works of my favorite Conservative author was wonderful, thanks for posting it.
Without seeing this video, what I have been seeing for the last four years, never mind the last four weeks or four months, was in my mind, most closely analogous to the French Revolution.
And to hear Whittle compare them, and point out that Robespierre called his tyrannical kangaroo court “The Committee of Public Safety”, and the parallel to what we see today with the Left is all to obvious. They would, with a straight face and fully mean it, call BLM and Antifa exactly that: “The Committee of Public Safety”.
The French Revolution was a communist disaster. Which is why messed up France is on its what, 6th republic?
The only thing what the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution have in common is that they got both rid of the Monarchies. But Napoleon crowned himself Emperor.
Start opening fire on these pukes.
These rioters were mal educated. They know nothing about history, economics or anything of any use. They have been propangandized too believe that their country is evil and has to be destroyed. You cannot reason with these people.
They have to be defeated in every aspect.
Sure I guess. I still contend the French Revolution was a disaster for reason and stability. The totalitarians took control.
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