While scanning through RCP this morning, I ran across this interesting article about Maximilien Robespierre, who has been rightly associated with the horrific Reign of Terror that occurred under his watch during the French Revolution. Personally, I have always found the French Revolution quite fascinating and informative, and it's a period of history that my fellow Americans would do well to better familiarize themselves with. It was here that the Modern Left was born, along with the proto-socialists led by François-Noël Babeuf, and the similarities between the revolutionaries of that era and the Leftists who want to "fundamentally transform" the United States are eerily striking. If you're familiar with Robespierre's career, you won't find anything new here, but for those who aren't terribly familiar with the man and the events surrounding him, it's well worth the read. Robespierre and The Terror http://www.historytoday.com/marisa-linton/robespierre-and-terror .
The Modern Left was much more exemplified by Thomas Paine, who was nearly a victim of the Terror I wasn't able to open the article. Does it point out that many of the nobility were poorer than most peasants? They exemplify what we call "land poor" (which actually comes from LandED poor. )They owned land and had other privileges, yes, but they also had restrictions on what they could do with it, which often impoverished them The whole of France in the 1790's had been impoverished mainly by two things, a Real Estate speculation scam , (the Mississippi Bubble in the early 1700s) and two long and expensive wars with England, (The French and Indian War and the ARW) The Terror killed many of the nobility that actually supported them. They were based more on bigotry and unreasoning hatred of a certain type of people rather than any principles. The French Revolution set the pattern for all Revolutions since. It "ate its own children" in that the radicals turned on most of their supporters and then had to be eliminated themselves by others who paved the way for the authoritarian Napoleon. In America we were saved from this by the intervention of George Washington, who deserves the title of "Father of His Country" for that alone.
Mark Twain contrasted the two reigns of terror: the monarchy which terrified France for a thousand years and the one that ended the monarchy, Feudalism and serfdom. "There were two 'Reigns of Terror', if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the "horrors of the... momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror - that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves." Mark Twain, writing about the French Revolution, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlbsPhHSWzw Long live the French Revolution !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Long Live Robespierre !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Long Live Saint-Just !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Long Live Marat !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/FQdlY0-0fhM http://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary...words=jordan+revolutionary+career+robespierre http://www.amazon.com/Napoleon-Revolution-David-P-Jordan-ebook/dp/B009M98DF4/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
