OWS Echoes The French Revolution.

PC, your list is silly, particularly for someone who was recently speaking of nuance. It reads like a Hallmark greeting card for conservatives.

The reason for the modifier of "social" is to distinguish social justice, or distributive justice, from retributive justice [punishment for crimes]. It's a nuance. I hope it's not lost on you. :eusa_angel:

Distributive justice is Biblical.

I am not advocating for a society where everyone has the same. I'm advocating for enough. For safety in neighborhoods, equal educational opportunity, safe water, access to healthy food, access to doctors and medicine.
 
I guess the people of France should have been satisfied with being poor, and just accepted that the lower classes faced most of the tax burden.

I guess our own founding fathers should have just been satisfied with what Great Britain was throwing at us too.

I agree. I don't have much patience for those who would accept injustice, like the old time preachers who would distract their flock with dreams of pie-in-the-sky.

Exactly. That's what conservatives [advocates for established power] have been telling the poor for centuries. That their situation is God's will. That they will get their reward in the afterlife-if they accept their situation here and now.
 
"The French Revolution, the Russian revolution, Gandhi's movement for India's independence, the Civil Rights movement, all of these have one thing in common-people had been pushed to their limit by tyranny. Real tyranny."

You are wonderfully consistent.....understanding is never a factor in your posts.

And, likewise, this thread is far too nuanced for you.

Probably, the McDonald's Dollar Menu is far too nuanced for you.

But..(sigh)...I admit that I look forward to your posts for the comic relief. Yes, you're beginning to grew on me, like was a colony of E. coli on room-temperature Canadian beef.

Yes, nuance. When I think of nuance, I think of someone so stupid that they blah, blah, blah about the French Revolution without understanding in the least why the poor revolted in the first place. :lmao:

"...why the poor revolted in the first place...."

The poor?

The poor?

Knowing less than nothing doesn't produce any barrier to you posting, does it?
Public school, no doubt, where any utterance deserves a pat on the head.

"...of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution"...Reign of Terror - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Both were bourgeois.
It is the 'poor of intellect,' such as you, SAP, who followed the bourgeois.

bour·geois (br-zhwä, brzhwä)
n. pl. bourgeois
1. A person belonging to the middle class.
2. A person whose attitudes and behavior are marked by conformity to the standards and conventions of the middle class.
3. In Marxist theory, a member of the property-owning class; a capitalist.

"The Jacobins and Girondins originally belonged to the same party. But whereas the latter recoiled at stirring up the "lower depths" of society, the Jacobins saw that this was the only alternative if the revolution was to be secured."
Socialist Appeal - 1793, Rise and Fall of the Jacobins



Amazing, SAP....most folks would have some shame in being an idiot.
Not you.

Arguing with you is like playing tennis against the drapes.
 
Yes, the poor. Who couldn't afford bread, the staple of their diet. Your own post acknowledges the role of "the lower classes".

You have approached the French Revolution in an incredibly clueless manner. No one is defending the guillotine.

Also-

I wish you could get a grip on your ego.
 
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Yes, the poor. Who couldn't afford bread, the staple of their diet. Your own post acknowledges the role of "the lower classes".

You have approached the French Revolution in an incredibly clueless manner. No one is defending the guillotine.

Also-

I wish you could get a grip on your ego.

So....you're retreating from:

"...why the poor revolted in the first place...."

And you agree that the French Revolution was middle-class inspired?

Wise move.


Who said you were uneducable?

This should lead you to an understanding of how important capitalism
was in the evolution of society.


" wish you could get a grip on your ego"
See...that's your fault!
Your acceptance of ignorance brings out the worst in me.
 
Yes, the poor. Who couldn't afford bread, the staple of their diet. Your own post acknowledges the role of "the lower classes".

You have approached the French Revolution in an incredibly clueless manner. No one is defending the guillotine.

Also-

I wish you could get a grip on your ego.

So....you're retreating from:

"...why the poor revolted in the first place...."

And you agree that the French Revolution was middle-class inspired?

Wise move.


Who said you were uneducable?

This should lead you to an understanding of how important capitalism
was in the evolution of society.

Now, PC. You're the one in retreat. You posted a screed against the French Revolution and OWS without understanding the reasons behind the two. Your only comprehension was that people were rising up against their "betters". And you foolishly consider yourself in that group of "betters". As if they give a damn about you.

" wish you could get a grip on your ego"
See...that's your fault!
Your acceptance of ignorance brings out the worst in me.

Ah, conservatism. The advocates of personal responsibility. :lmao:

I've yet to meet one of you who lived up to that. :eusa_angel:
 
One comment on this video does say the Cops are going to cause a revolution......hmmm
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=503BrDrrb68]'Occupy Oakland' protester shot by rubber bullet while filming cops - YouTube[/ame]
 
We can safely set aside the linkage offered between the French Revolution and later Communist revolutionary movements as nonsensical. The only similarity was a challenge of entrenched authority. The spirit informing the French Revolution, its ideological raison d'être, was democracy. That cannot be said about any Communist movement.

We can also dismiss the simplistic assertion that we can choose between the French and American revolutions. These were very different and not comparable phenomena. The French Revolution actually WAS a revolution. The American "revolution" was not; it was a war of independence that, when won, left the government it had been fighting against still in power, and also left the governing structures in each colony/state unchanged. It did erect a new layer of governance in the federal government, but that change, although important, was not revolutionary. America has never actually had a revolution; we have always chosen reform instead when confronted with the possibility.

So instead of bothering about all that garbage, let's consider objectively what happened as a result of the Revolution itself. Bear in mind that France had no democratic tradition, unlike America which grew from the democratic and human-rights traditions of England. France was starting fresh, building liberty from the pure and mucky swampland of monarchy and aristocracy.

The people overthrew the King. They attempted to erect a republic to replace it. They failed, partly because of opposition by the rest of Europe, partly because they simply didn't know how to go about it. The First Republic degenerated into chaos, and was taken over by a dictator.

Napoleon actually advanced the cause of democracy and the ideals of the Revolution more than the First Republic did. While he called himself Emperor and ruled as a dictator, he also created legal and political institutions that endured long after he was gone and became the foundation for a true republic that emerged later.

After Napoleon's defeat, the monarchy was briefly restored, but it was a constitutional monarchy very different from the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI. The monarchy was overthrown by the Second Republic in 1848, then that was overthrown by Napoleon III and the Second Empire, which after the Franco Prussian War in 1870 was itself overthrown by the Third Republic -- and the Third Republic endured all the way until World War II. Except for the brief years of Nazi occupation, France has been ruled by a genuine republic ever since.

None of that would have been possible without the French Revolution overthrowing the King in 1789. The French Revolution was a good thing, and if some bad times followed, those were necessary times in the difficult transition France had to make from absolute monarchy to the democratic republic she is today.

America today is of course very different from France at the end of the 18th century. It is also very different from Russia in the early 20th century or China in the mid-20th century. We have a long democratic tradition and, as a people, do not easily accept non-democratic rule -- which is of course the real reason for the Occupy movement; it is an attempt to restore democracy to a government that is controlled by rich donors rather than by the voters. We as a people made the transition the French made much earlier than they did. We do not need to make the same transition all over again now.

Because this is such a very different place than France of 1789, we need not fear a similar short-term outcome. There will be no Reign of Terror for us, and no Napoleon will be necessary to create the institutions of democracy -- we already have those institutions and need only make them work.
 
The left IDOLIZES the French Revolution. They run around humming Song of Angry Men. They know nothing of history, the left only thinks that if they can kill off the rich and take what they have, they will build a great civilization, like the French.

The French Revolution was a FAILURE. First they killed the royalty. Then the aristocrats. Then the Christians. Then the landed peasants. Then they killed one another! It ended with the dictatorship of Napoleon. After that Europe as a whole was sick of the nonsense and threatened to destroy what was left of France unless the monarchy was restored by force, under threat of war. Europe put a Bourbon king upon the throne of France. Good going guys! Poor stupid fools.

Most of what the left knows about the French Revolution and its causes are lies. They can spout off the lies but not an ounce of truth.

Now if you want a comparison to the French Revolution and today, it has to be HIGH TAXES. To support a nobilityl We don't have a nobility. We have UNIONS. Specifically unions of public employees. So if the middle class today are going to revolt due to the same reasons, high taxes, the middle class would be burning down the union halls.

I would hope that we have the left's idea of the glorious revolution. They should be encouraged. It will make it that much easier to wipe out the entirety of liberalism down to the last ideology.
 
The French Revolution was a FAILURE.

No, it was a success. The success just took 70 years to finalize. But without bringing the monarchy to an end, the ultimate triumph of Republican France could never have happened.
 
Liberals don't "idolize" the French Revolution, Katzndogz. Where do you guys get this stuff?
 
1. The OWS movement reflects several aspects of the French Revolution.
Had they an actual education, we would have seen cardboard signs with
"Liberté, égalité, fraternité."

a. égalité..equality...is the demand that the so-called "1%" be brought down to their level.

2. The OWS folks certainly count as a mob.

a. Gustave Le Bon, in his groundbreaking 1896 book, “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind,” was the first to identify the phenomenon of mass psychology. Both Hitler and Mussolini used his book to understand how to incite a mob.
The administration had hoped to harnass this mob as an ally.

3. In her book, "Demonic," Coulter illustrates how rumors and catch-phrases innervate a mob, and this is clear in that OWS and their supporters believe nonsense such as workers incomes stagnating, or falling, and only some bête noire called the "1%" is thriving, at their expense.

4. The man most identified with the French Revolution is Rousseau, who famously saw man sans government as 'the noble savage,' and some 'general will,' that the group expressed, as the right path. How did that work out in the OWS communes...? An anemic reflection of the French Revolution...without guillotines. Up to now.

a. In France, there was the development of an apparatus of ideological enforcement for ‘reason.’ But rather than necessitate liberty, Edmund Burke was prescient enough to predict that ‘enlightened despotism’ would be embodied in the general will, a formula for oppression as in ‘tyranny of popular opinion’ or even ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat.’

b. Although attributed to Rousseau, it was Diderot who gave the model for totalitarianism of reason: “We must reason about all things,” and anyone who ‘refuses to seek out the truth’ thereby renounces his human nature and “should be treated by the rest of his species as a wild beast.” So, once ‘truth’ is determined, anyone who doesn’t accept it was “either insane or wicked and morally evil.” It is not the individual who has the “ right to decide about the nature of right and wrong,” but only “the human race,” expressed as the general will. Himmelfarb, “The Roads to Modernity,” p. 167-68

c. Robespierre used Rousseau’s call for a “reign of virtue,’ proclaiming the Republic of Virtue, his euphemism for The Terror. In ‘The Social Contract’ Rousseau advocated death for anyone who did not uphold the common values of the community: the totalitarian view of reshaping of humanity, echoed in communism, Nazism, progressivism. Robespierre: “the necessity of bringing about a complete regeneration and, if I may express myself so, of creating a new people.” Himmefarb, Ibid.

d. In this particular idea of the Enlightenment, the need to change human nature, and to eliminate customs and traditions, to remake established institutions, to do away with all inequalities in order to bring man closer to the state, which was the expression of the general will. Talmon, “Origins of Totalitarian Democracy,” p. 3-7

I will bet you a cookie that at least 2/3 of the board won't even understand this post.
 
I guess the people of France should have been satisfied with being poor, and just accepted that the lower classes faced most of the tax burden.

I guess our own founding fathers should have just been satisfied with what Great Britain was throwing at us too.

Our revolution bore no resemblance to the French Revolution, but I'm not surprised by how many of the board's DDs - Designated Dumbasses - showed up to demonstate how much nothing they know about either.
 
And how did that French revolution work out for the fat cats?

it didnt work out so great for the revolutionaries as well. The Reign of Terror was a cannabalistic feeding frenzy of revolutionaries, leading the way from Ancien Regime, to Revolutionary Republic, to the terror of the Directory, and then to Empire.

Didn't work out for much of anybody. Any revolution where the absolute best outcome anyone in the country achieves is to live through it is just not a success.
 
I guess the people of France should have been satisfied with being poor, and just accepted that the lower classes faced most of the tax burden.

I guess our own founding fathers should have just been satisfied with what Great Britain was throwing at us too.

Time for some remediation.

The choice was not "...poor, and just accepted that the lower classes..." versus slaughering and maiming thousands of their countrymen...

The choice was the French Revolution and coextensive attack on Christianity, or

The American Revolution, infused with morality and religion.

1. While the American Revolution was created by and for ‘classical liberals,’ the French Revolution was by and for what those now called ‘liberals’ or progressives.

a. “The American intellectual class from the mid 19th century onward has disliked liberalism (which originally referred to individualism, private property, and limits on power) precisely because the liberal society has no overarching goal.” War Is the Health of the State

b. The French Revolution is the godless antithesis of the founding of America.

2. Unlike the American version, the French Revolution was a revolt by the mob, and was the primogenitor of the Bolshevik Revolution, Hitler’s Nazi Party, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot’s killing fields, and the dirty waifs smashing Starbucks’ windows whenever bankers come town. Those with the gift of irony see similar actions in the ‘Cradle of Democracy,’ Greece.

3. Contrary to the assertions of Liberals, who wish our founding fathers were more like the godless French peasants, skipping around with human heads on a pike, our founding fathers were God-fearing descendants of Puritans and other colonial Christians.

4. The men behind the American Revolution- the Minutemen, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the framers of the Constitution- were the very opposite of a mob. For the most part, educated, aristocratic property holders, doctors, lawyers, ministers and other respectable tradesmen with everything to lose should the revolution fail. These were the classical liberals, or, as we would address them today, the conservatives.

a. The modern Tea Party still abhors mob behavior. This from a rally in Boston: “The Obama Hitler sign. Let’s look out for those people, and make sure people know they’re not us.” A middle-aged, out-of-work Republican from Jamaica Plain agreed that it was crucial to police the line between the reasonable Tea Party people and party crashers: “We need to disabuse the public of some of the more exotic rumors out there.” Boston tea parties past and present : The New Yorker

b. A 26-year-old Tea Partier from MIT thought about throwing a copy of the 2000-page health care bill into Boston Harbor…but changed his mind when he found out it would be against the law. Ibid.
A far better exposition of the above can be found in "Demonic," by Coulter.


Wake up.
Wise up.
Grow up.

Oh bullshit.

The American Revolution was NOT a Christian movement. There is no god in the Constitution. Christian religions are intolerant of other religions.

The American Revolution was a movement peopled by Christians. No matter how much you want to remake the Founding Generation into a bunch of atheists, it's not going to happen.

And if Christian religions are so intolerant of other religions, how come the most religiously tolerant nations are the ones with strong Christian backgrounds? You want high death tolls, you gotta go look at the atheistic Communist nations. You want daily barbarity, that'd be the Muslims. As for the nations of Western Civilization, it's no accident that the farther they get from their Christian roots, the more you find laws restricting the free practice of religion.
 
Oh bullshit.

The American Revolution was NOT a Christian movement. There is no god in the Constitution. Christian religions are intolerant of other religions.

I someone paying you to play the fool today?

1. The most quoted source was the Bible. Established in the original writings of our Founding Fathers we find that they discovered in Isaiah 33:22 the three branches of government: Isaiah 33:22 “For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.” Here we see the judicial, the legislative and the executive branches. In Ezra 7:24 we see where they established the tax exempt status of the church: Ezra 7:24 “Also we certify you, that touching any of the priests and Levites, singers, porters, Nethinims, or ministers of this house of God, it shall not be lawful to impose toll, tribute, or custom, upon them.”

When we look at our Constitution we see in Article 4 Section 4 that we are guaranteed a Republican form of government, that was found in Exodus 18:21: “Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens:” This indicates that we are to choose, or elect God fearing men and women. Looking at Article 3 Section 3 we see almost word for word Deuteronomy 17:6: ‘No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses. . .’ Deuteronomy 17:6 “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses. . .”. The next paragraph in Article 3 Section 3 refers to who should pay the price for treason. In England, they could punish the sons for the trespasses of the father, if the father died.
Roger Anghis -- Bring America Back To Her Religious Roots, Part 7

That has to be a twist on the Magna Carta too then, huh?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Magna Carta was written by a bunch of medieval Catholics? Fairly seriously religious folks, those medieval Catholics.
 
The American Revolution was a movement peopled by Christians. No matter how much you want to remake the Founding Generation into a bunch of atheists, it's not going to happen.

And if Christian religions are so intolerant of other religions, how come the most religiously tolerant nations are the ones with strong Christian backgrounds? You want high death tolls, you gotta go look at the atheistic Communist nations. You want daily barbarity, that'd be the Muslims. As for the nations of Western Civilization, it's no accident that the farther they get from their Christian roots, the more you find laws restricting the free practice of religion.

Some of the founders were Christians. Others were deists. They founded a secular government.

Most Americans are tolerant of other religions. The far right American is typically far less tolerant of other religions than the average American. Based on their posts, I believe that they see Christianity as a part of their nationalism.
 
1. The OWS movement reflects several aspects of the French Revolution.
Had they an actual education, we would have seen cardboard signs with
"Liberté, égalité, fraternité."

a. égalité..equality...is the demand that the so-called "1%" be brought down to their level.

2. The OWS folks certainly count as a mob.

a. Gustave Le Bon, in his groundbreaking 1896 book, “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind,” was the first to identify the phenomenon of mass psychology. Both Hitler and Mussolini used his book to understand how to incite a mob.
The administration had hoped to harnass this mob as an ally.

3. In her book, "Demonic," Coulter illustrates how rumors and catch-phrases innervate a mob, and this is clear in that OWS and their supporters believe nonsense such as workers incomes stagnating, or falling, and only some bête noire called the "1%" is thriving, at their expense.

4. The man most identified with the French Revolution is Rousseau, who famously saw man sans government as 'the noble savage,' and some 'general will,' that the group expressed, as the right path. How did that work out in the OWS communes...? An anemic reflection of the French Revolution...without guillotines. Up to now.

a. In France, there was the development of an apparatus of ideological enforcement for ‘reason.’ But rather than necessitate liberty, Edmund Burke was prescient enough to predict that ‘enlightened despotism’ would be embodied in the general will, a formula for oppression as in ‘tyranny of popular opinion’ or even ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat.’

b. Although attributed to Rousseau, it was Diderot who gave the model for totalitarianism of reason: “We must reason about all things,” and anyone who ‘refuses to seek out the truth’ thereby renounces his human nature and “should be treated by the rest of his species as a wild beast.” So, once ‘truth’ is determined, anyone who doesn’t accept it was “either insane or wicked and morally evil.” It is not the individual who has the “ right to decide about the nature of right and wrong,” but only “the human race,” expressed as the general will. Himmelfarb, “The Roads to Modernity,” p. 167-68

c. Robespierre used Rousseau’s call for a “reign of virtue,’ proclaiming the Republic of Virtue, his euphemism for The Terror. In ‘The Social Contract’ Rousseau advocated death for anyone who did not uphold the common values of the community: the totalitarian view of reshaping of humanity, echoed in communism, Nazism, progressivism. Robespierre: “the necessity of bringing about a complete regeneration and, if I may express myself so, of creating a new people.” Himmefarb, Ibid.

d. In this particular idea of the Enlightenment, the need to change human nature, and to eliminate customs and traditions, to remake established institutions, to do away with all inequalities in order to bring man closer to the state, which was the expression of the general will. Talmon, “Origins of Totalitarian Democracy,” p. 3-7
Astute observation with which I fully agree. And I look forward to construction of guillotines on K Street and on Pennsylvania Avenue.
 
1. The OWS movement reflects several aspects of the French Revolution.
Had they an actual education, we would have seen cardboard signs with
"Liberté, égalité, fraternité."

a. égalité..equality...is the demand that the so-called "1%" be brought down to their level.

2. The OWS folks certainly count as a mob.

a. Gustave Le Bon, in his groundbreaking 1896 book, “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind,” was the first to identify the phenomenon of mass psychology. Both Hitler and Mussolini used his book to understand how to incite a mob.
The administration had hoped to harnass this mob as an ally.

3. In her book, "Demonic," Coulter illustrates how rumors and catch-phrases innervate a mob, and this is clear in that OWS and their supporters believe nonsense such as workers incomes stagnating, or falling, and only some bête noire called the "1%" is thriving, at their expense.

4. The man most identified with the French Revolution is Rousseau, who famously saw man sans government as 'the noble savage,' and some 'general will,' that the group expressed, as the right path. How did that work out in the OWS communes...? An anemic reflection of the French Revolution...without guillotines. Up to now.

a. In France, there was the development of an apparatus of ideological enforcement for ‘reason.’ But rather than necessitate liberty, Edmund Burke was prescient enough to predict that ‘enlightened despotism’ would be embodied in the general will, a formula for oppression as in ‘tyranny of popular opinion’ or even ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat.’

b. Although attributed to Rousseau, it was Diderot who gave the model for totalitarianism of reason: “We must reason about all things,” and anyone who ‘refuses to seek out the truth’ thereby renounces his human nature and “should be treated by the rest of his species as a wild beast.” So, once ‘truth’ is determined, anyone who doesn’t accept it was “either insane or wicked and morally evil.” It is not the individual who has the “ right to decide about the nature of right and wrong,” but only “the human race,” expressed as the general will. Himmelfarb, “The Roads to Modernity,” p. 167-68

c. Robespierre used Rousseau’s call for a “reign of virtue,’ proclaiming the Republic of Virtue, his euphemism for The Terror. In ‘The Social Contract’ Rousseau advocated death for anyone who did not uphold the common values of the community: the totalitarian view of reshaping of humanity, echoed in communism, Nazism, progressivism. Robespierre: “the necessity of bringing about a complete regeneration and, if I may express myself so, of creating a new people.” Himmefarb, Ibid.

d. In this particular idea of the Enlightenment, the need to change human nature, and to eliminate customs and traditions, to remake established institutions, to do away with all inequalities in order to bring man closer to the state, which was the expression of the general will. Talmon, “Origins of Totalitarian Democracy,” p. 3-7

I will bet you a cookie that at least 2/3 of the board won't even understand this post.

Those will who focus on the words in bold.
 

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