In 1793, Rousseau had been dead for fifteen years.
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) March 20, 2021
ADDED: Turley took down the tweet Kruse mocked. He's reposted like this, so that it no longer depicts Rousseau as speaking of "eating the rich" in 1793.Rousseau wanted to eat the rich’s braaaaaains
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) March 20, 2021
For identity politics, there is no surer bet than attacking the “super rich.” Since philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau spoke of “eating the rich” before the Reign of Terror, politicians have had an insatiable appetite for class warfare politics.https://t.co/nBIE0zW0iJ
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 20, 2021
Posts
220 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 220 of 220"The wealth exemption floor would be lowered and lowered until the wealth tax hit everyone."
This , of course, has always been the object of "Tax The Rich" legislation. The rich being you and I no matter what our circumstances.
The Bill of Rights wasn't the problem. It was a check on the powers of the federal government. The problem was the 14th Amendment. It wasn't that the amendment was a problem or that the idea behind it was mistaken. The problem was that it was so loosely drafted as to give the courts the ability to overturn just about any state law or local ordinance.
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The debate about how violent or revolutionary the American Revolution was has been going on forever. My best guess is that it was and it wasn't. There were obvious differences between the American and the French Revolution. They were both revolutions and both violent, but the French Revolution spun out of control in a way that the American Revolution didn't. The ability of American elites (who had no kings or nobles anymore) to keep things under control has led many to conclude that our revolution wasn't a real one, but people in the 1770s would certainly have disagreed.
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Yes, the Western nations had empires, and even the US did. Just how much the empires really created the wealth of the West is debatable. You could really make the case for Britain relying on India, the Dutch relying on the East Indies and for all the powers benefitting from their Caribbean colonies, but did the American or German empires really get more out of their colonial possessions than they put into them? Informal empires, such as Britain and the US had in Latin America, are another complication: we profited from the trade, but how far are we responsible for their problems? And just what does having colonies and empires a century ago obligate the Western nations to do now? How far are they expected to go in satisfying the demands of the inhabitants of the Third World and the political moralizers?
Empire by Niall Ferguson addresses much of this.
The ignoramus Greg apparently never heard of French colonialism in Vietnam--which is puzzling given his apparent expertise on the Frogs and their worthless endeavors. No mass emigration there; no mass emigration of Belgians to the Congo, no mass emigration of Krauts to German Africa, no mass emigration of Brits to Rhodesia or Nigeria or Kenya . . .
Pretty comprehensive ignorance on display!
The crank Greg feels outrage (OUTRAGE I tells ya!) over commonplaces of revolution and civil war in Europe, and boasts that the Anglo-American split was kinder and gentler, as if that was either news or useful.
Context matters. The US colonists had already developed English precedents of self-government and relative economic and cultural liberty to the point where they were the best-educated and most prosperous population on the planet.
Their grievances, real or imagined, were against distant authorities who made it difficult to make more money in a dynamic world.
The French, OTOH, were a mass of peasants with no prospects but continued exploitation by a tiny crust of degenerate inbred aristos. Their oppressors were local and vicious, demanding both rents and labor from their human property, while living in tax-exempt luxury.
The Bourbons were so despised that only their hired Swiss troops defended them from the mob during the Rev, and had to be run out again--without significant violence, such was the improvement in society after 1795, but Greg knows better.
Centuries of that shit, Greg. But apparently it's only when the French rose against it that stuff begins to matter. Greg knows better.
It always amuses me to have harm wished on me by Internet toughs, BTW.
Narr
It means I've won
Blogger J. Farmer said...
The Philippines is in Asia. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were living there, and the country was under US control and jurisdiction.
What did we get out of it?
What raw materials were we exploiting and sending back to the US? Were they a free and independent country (land) before we conquered them?
Also, I said "territorial expansion and colonial empires in Africa and Asia."
The normal construction of that would be:
(territorial expansion and colonial empires) in (Africa and Asia),
It's not
(territorial expansion) and (colonial empires in Africa and Asia)
Nothing in your words or punctuation implied the second meaning.
No colonies in Africa. No territorial expansion in Africa or Asia. We'd been engaging in territorial expansion in North America the entire time we were there, nothing about industrialization changed that.
"Colonies" send materials and. goods back to the mother country, and are generally acquired by taking teh land from those who lived there, rather than by conquering someone else's province.
What were we exporting from the Philippines back to the US?
Oh goody, Narr the fan of the Reign of Terror is back!
The French, OTOH, were a mass of peasants with no prospects but continued exploitation by a tiny crust of degenerate inbred aristos. Their oppressors were local and vicious, demanding both rents and labor from their human property, while living in tax-exempt luxury.
The Bourbons were so despised that only their hired Swiss troops defended them from the mob during the Rev, and had to be run out again--without significant violence, such was the improvement in society after 1795, but Greg knows better.
Gosh, so easy to overthrow the government. One then wonders why it was necessary to murder 20k in the Reign of Terror, plus another 20k in "great upheaval" side effects?
Hints: as you've admitted, a large number of the 20k murdered in the reign of Terror were fellow revolutionaries whose main crime was they weren't bloodthirsty enough.
The 20k murdered outside of Paris were in the large part those oppressed peasants, who the murderers and thugs in Paris wanted to keep on oppressing.
A brief history of the French Revolution:
People decide to get rid of the King
Murderous thugs decide deposing isn't enough, he must be killed
Murderous thugs decide that just killing the King isn't enough, they must murder everyone who disagrees with them
Crap government gets overthrown by a General, later Emperor, who proceeds to wage war against all of Europe.
Emperor gets defeated, replaced by new King
Net total dead, from beginning of FR to 1815? 500k - 3 million.
"At the beginning of the Revolution, the numbers of males to females was virtually identical. By the end of the conflict only 0.857 males remained for every female."
Got a 25 year period where the execrable French Monarchy managed to murder off 500,000 French peasants?
As with every Western revolution / "great upheaval" run by people who hate Christianity, all the FR accomplished was to make the situation worse
Greg, you have no idea what you're talking about. Cite a decent authority on "1/2 million murdered French peasants." When, where, by whom? (Also, you seem to be obsessed with the haters of Christianity, as if they were the driving force when in fact like all the radicals they had their day and ended up losing to the moderates.)
So, when, where, who?
Not in the Vendee, where the fighting was triggered by a Royalist massacre of Republicans, and where the atrocities became widespread on both sides, as already stipulated.
Let me fill you in on European history. In 1789 most of the continent was quasi-medieval in social structure and economics; most people lived as peasants and most of them had few if any human rights--if not the king, then the lord, and the priests, and the rich hemmed them in at every turn.
If you were part of the urban mass, you lived decently only insofar as you were useful to the rich and high-born.
If you were a desperate young man, you might join an army where you could be flogged almost at whim, led by mostly-noble mostly-fools, and sent to fight for less-than-nothing causes under a flag with a cross on it.
And there was nothing gentle about pre-Rev and anti-French armies. Bergen-op-Zoom, 1747, Badajoz, 1812.
I'll come back of course, but leave with this: historians allow their subjects of study to live in their own worlds, and see with their own eyes.
Narr
But some people know better when revolution is justified
And furthermore.
The French monarchs, as I said, had big-footed their neighbors every chance they got. Louis XIV had the Rhenish Palatinate basically scorched as a buffer territory against Germanic rivals, none of whom individually could contend. (One byproduct was a lot of immigration to British North America.)
For that matter, Louis XVI the martyr (light a candle already) was executed for treason against the state, whose constitutional monarch he had agreed to become, and after trying to flee in order to gain the aid of German armies for a return to divine right. Bet you didn't know that.
Not for nothing did Churchill dub L XIV the pest of Europe, but despite indifferent success he's recalled as the Sun King. He made himself the focus of attention and his glory the primary object of power . . . and solidified the place of French elite culture as the pinnacle of graceful living and civilized thought, however much lesser peoples complained and disdained.
Bonaparte, in his bumptious way, played a similar role, on account of his unmatched skill at the sport of kings. He was more successful in 15 years at extending French ideas and influence to the farthest reaches of an oppressed continent than the kings had dreamt of, by mere generalship. His powerful semi-feudal and autocratic foes couldn't win without upping their games, but Europe was always a tough neighborhood.
So broke and exhausted did the Emperor leave his people, and so hated was he, that decades after his death he was entombed in a church, his nephew was top dog, and the French army was still the one that people compared their own to.
Fifty years later and more, despite being defeated in 1871, French language and culture had spread not just across Europe but across parts of Africa and Asia where French soldiers and colonists were few, so effectively that the French were able to mobilize African and Asian manpower in large numbers to help defend against Germanic monarchs and tyrants in the 20th C.
As to the French in WWI, how silly. The Brits and Amis didn't fight and die in France as a favor to the Frogs (any more than the French supported the AmRev out of generosity), they did so because they judged a German victory to be a disaster for themselves (golly how could they think that?) and they needed the French poilus as much as the French needed them--even moreso early on.
Despite the shallow Anglophone sneering, the French army in WWI was the primary killer of Germans, and the primary recipient of German attention. With the possible exception of the Confederates in 1861-1865 no English-speaking population has endured the like against a much larger enemy.
There's no moral judgement in those facts.
Narr
Off for a bit
@Greg the Class Traitor:
What were we exporting from the Philippines back to the US?
Sugar, tobacco, tropical staples. More importantly, the Philippines became a market for American goods and capital. Even more importantly, it provided a strategic position in the Pacific and a potential foothold into China.
"Colonies" send materials and. goods back to the mother country, and are generally acquired by taking teh land from those who lived there, rather than by conquering someone else's province.
It was sending materials and goods, and it was acquired by attacking the people that lived there. It's called the Philippine–American War. It was run by the Americans, and the local population did not have a say in it. Was British Malaya and French Indochina colonies? If so, what do you imagine differentiates them from the Philippines?
So, just to recap, yes the US had imperial expansion in Asia. That was 50 years after the US had used gunboats to open Japan to "free" trade.
Narr: Give some credit to Richelieu.
Good point, mock, just to name the few whose names are familiar anymore even to the educated.
Body count arguments are mug's game, but unavoidable in history discussions. It's easy enough for a well-fed 21st C person with a job and money in the bank to sit at the computer and lament all the violence of the past, even the violence of illiterate peasants and laborers caught in a system of interlocking exploiters, the violence of educated and intelligent bourgeois who saw no reason to bow and scrape to smug and venal aristos and priests, the violence of armies of citizens and patriots against armies of hirelings.
My approach is to first see if the pacifistic 21st C person acknowledges any improvement in condition from Before to After.
One easy example would be-- both Napoleon and Hitler ruled most of Europe for a brief time after stunning upset victories, only to bring about their own downfalls through hubris.
Discuss the ways in which their regimes differed, how the changes they made endured or failed to endure, and how much their legacy was claimed or repudiated later.
Let's use a different lens. Critique Andrew Jackson and his wars against the Creeks et. al., and eventual removals. Same time period--while Bonaparte was rampaging through Russia and back out through France's traditional battlespace (a.k.a. Germany) leaving death and profound social change behind, Old Hickory was big-footing through Georgia and Alabama pretty brutally too--what was his excuse?
Napoleon conquered a continent of powerful and ancient kingdoms and empires; the USA conquered and exterminated on a continent of tribes, bands, and weak rivals, either inherently like Mexico or by distance like the UK, France, Spain, or Russia.
Those aren't moral facts either, just facts.
Narr
And tomorrow is another day
Narr
But some people know better when revolution is justified
No, moron, some people are just able to asses when a bad situation has been made worse.
Narr said...
Greg, you have no idea what you're talking about. Cite a decent authority on "1/2 million murdered French peasants." When, where, by whom?
Wow, you really are stupid, aren't you. Napoleon's armies were filled mostly with peasants. Who died in massive numbers, fighting all of Napoleon's wars.
Wars and deaths that would not have happened if the French Revolution had not taken place.
"The Bourbons suck! it was bad under them!"
Yeah, no sh!t.
But it was worse under the French Revolution, and under the dictator Napoleon. Who had a secret police to oppress and muder them at home, and a Army that drafted them and got them killed abroad.
"X is bad" is a meaningless statement until you've examined the alternative. ~14% of French males died from when the Bourbons were deposed, to when the Bourbon Monarchy was restored. The demographic cost of that was France went from the dominant powerhouse of Europe, to not.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1009279/total-population-france-1700-2020/
French population went up 50% in the 1700s. It went up 33% in the 1800s
German population in the 1800s more than doubled, going from 70% of France's to 140%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#/media/File:Population_of_German_territories_1800_-_2000.JPG
It wasn't just Germany. The UK population doubled from 1800 to 1850 (the numbers I could quickly find) http://www.england-history.org/2009/10/population-growth/
France desperately needed British and American help against the Germans because the French Revolution set France on a downward spiral from which it never recovered.
Worse for who? How worse?
Nobody better off? A revolution in human progress between 1750 and 1850, in large part because the corrupt and senile old caste system couldn't handle the new reality in the form of a mere general from Corsica?
To defeat him and the ideas he represented (however imperfectly) the crowned ruffians had to adopt many of the same practices in their armies, which required to varying degrees social and political reforms in their societies--largely peaceful and self-interested reforms, but when the old ways fail smart people change. When attempts were made to turn the clock back after 1815 it only bottled up still legitimate reformist and nationalist sentiment for explosions later-- 1830, 1848.
The Decemberists in 1820s Russia were largely men who had seen France, even defeated France, and thought Russia could use some of that after all.
The ideas and ideals of the AmRev and FrenchRev were of the same order as the ideas of Huss, Luther, or Calvin in their appeal and potential to change rigidly ordered societies, and it took centuries of war and mountains of dead . . . was Europe and its civilization richer and more powerful in 1750--- when the new ideas had been accepted--than in 1550?
Narr
I know, I'm talking to someone who doesn't know what a colony is
Actually, Napoleon was highly successful in using non-French, especially Germans, to fill out the ranks. But Poles and other subject peoples liked what the French had to offer.
I'd say that many millions in Europe did examine alternatives such as continued obeisance to crown and intolerant church, continued restrictions on -basic- human rights, continued unfair economic arrangements, and decided to fight against them--sometimes on the battlefield but more widely and importantly in the realm of ideas. Whether that would have happened if the Austrians and Russians (sheesh!) had smushed that guy at Austerlitz is anyone's guess, but I am doubtful.
I appreciate your stats, but let's consider a few complicating factors to your demographic argument that French population declines are the direct result of the period 1790-1815.
Why not consider population figures from say, Spain, or Denmark, Sweden, or the USofA? The pop growth in the German lands was impressive, but how do we know the connection--if any--to the legal and economic changes forced on those lands by the French dominance? Freer minds and freer markets?
For that matter, what counts as Germany in 1800 as opposed to 1900? In 1800 it was a linguistic and cultural region including many minorities and in 1900 it was a clearly defined nation-state--only a regional analysis would get us anywhere I think--and here's a wrinkle-- in 1900 Germany included Alsace and Lorraine, numbers to be subtracted from
French population in any 1800 vs 1900 comparison.
That there were population growth differentials is indisputable, that there's a single explanation is not. The very cool map linked at footnote 14 of the Demographics of Germany wikipedia page shows the French fertility rate as lower than almost everybody to the east by 1805 already, and if you track through time you'll see that other countries' rates (as defined by present-day borders!) vary widely over the period 1800 - 1910, whether Bonaparte had dropped by or not.
This is getting long, but let's be clear on terms: war is not murder.
Narr
The distinction is as old as the old testament
Narr said...
Worse for who? How worse?
Hmm, let's start with the 40K+ murdered in the Terror, and "great upheavals."
Then there's the 500,000 to 3 million killed fighting Napoleon's wars
Then there's the women who never got married, because there were only 857 men for each 1000 women.
Then there's all the French people who saw their nation continually drop in power WRT Germany. "Revanche!" That's French for "Revenge!" And it's because the Germans kept on defeating the French.
See Alsace-Lorraine
.
Let me guess, they're just some eggs on the way to the omelet of, something.
Colonies
A lesson for the ignorant
To quote Machiavelli:
The other and better course is to send colonies to one or two places, which may be as keys to that state, for it is necessary either to do this or else to keep there a great number of cavalry and infantry. A prince does not spend much on colonies, for with little or no expense he can send them out and keep them there, and he offends a minority only of the citizens from whom he takes lands and houses to give them to the new inhabitants; and those whom he offends, remaining poor and scattered, are never able to injure him; whilst the rest being uninjured are easily kept quiet, and at the same time are anxious not to err for fear it should happen to them as it has to those who have been despoiled.
I'm sorry you people like to misuse the word, but it has an actual meaning, as demonstrated above.
There are colonies, and there are conquered countries. One of the main reasons why by 1770 it was 13 British colonies in North America, and nothing French, was because the British made actual colonies, of their people, who took over the land, grew, and built a population and resource base which could support and project far more power than French hunters, trappers, and traders could do.
The French did not colonize Vietnam, they conquered it.
There's a difference, and people who don't "learn" their history from marxists understand it
Narr said...
The ideas and ideals of the AmRev and FrenchRev were of entirely different order, and direction.
The French Revolution worked to burn everything down, and replace it with the delusions of the revolutionaries.
The American Revolution was run by people who understood the vast limits of the human intellect, and so took what was good and built upon it, looking to the past to understand where and why other governments had failed, and who understood that however necessary government might be, it is always evil, almost never a force for good, and as such must be leashed and limited.
Ideas utterly foreign to the French Revolution, and to Napoleon's Empire
Narr said...
Actually, Napoleon was highly successful in using non-French, especially Germans, to fill out the ranks.
Yes, I know. Which is why I didn't include "allies" totals of deaths.
And why the 857 men / 1000 women number matters.
But Poles and other subject peoples liked what the French had to offer.
They did before Napoleon made himself Emperor. Then Beethoven renamed his Eroica Sympathy, in disgust.
I'd say that many millions in Europe did examine alternatives such as continued obeisance to crown and intolerant church, continued restrictions on -basic- human rights
Basic human rights? Like freedom of speech? Freedom of religion? Right to be innocent until proven guilty? Freedom not to be murdered by raving lunatics throwing a Terror?
Those kind of basic human rights? none of which were ever honored by the FR or Napoleon?
Why not consider population figures from say, Spain, or Denmark, Sweden, or the USofA?
Well, let's see, you have a has been country, two small countries that had no significant influence, and a country with massive immigration such that you can't do a fair comparison. Which is why I went with France's Western Geopolitical competitors, instead.
The pop growth in the German lands was impressive, but how do we know the connection--if any--to the legal and economic changes forced on those lands by the French dominance? Freer minds and freer markets?
Your claim was that the FR enhanced French power. My claim is that it destroyed French power and influence. If you're going to agree with me, we can move on from that one.
For that matter, what counts as Germany in 1800 as opposed to 1900? In 1800 it was a linguistic and cultural region including many minorities and in 1900 it was a clearly defined nation-state--only a regional analysis would get us anywhere I think--and here's a wrinkle-- in 1900 Germany included Alsace and Lorraine, numbers to be subtracted from
French population in any 1800 vs 1900 comparison.
Feel free to come up with, and justify, "better" numbers. Until then? The FR was a massive demographic blow to France
That there were population growth differentials is indisputable, that there's a single explanation is not. The very cool map linked at footnote 14 of the Demographics of Germany wikipedia page shows the French fertility rate as lower than almost everybody to the east by 1805 already
Thus proving my point, no?
This is getting long, but let's be clear on terms: war is not murder.
They're dead, & wouldn't have been w/o the wars. Therefore, they're worse off, not better off
Sp, just to wrap up:
The French Revolution was destructive of the rights we Americans consider the most basic:
Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, right to be innocent until proven guilty, freedom not to be murdered by raving lunatics throwing a Terror
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are a great basis for a society.
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity are not (you can't have the 1st, if you demand the other 2)
The French Revolution took a European powerhouse, made the foundations even more rotten (quite the trick), and quite possibly laid the basis for WWI by setting France on a downward path, and Germany on an upward one.
The French Monarchy Wass wretched. The French Revolution was worse
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