When you least expect it, the most interesting revelations surface. I was discussing some fundamental differences between my positions and positions of the left with some Democrats yesterday. As usually happens in these situations, they grew increasingly impatient with me as I defended my position from compromise. As we parted, they made a reference to their firmly held belief that the French Revolution was the logical outcome of Laissez Faire capitalism. They all held this conclusion as if it were fact, and they tossed off questions to this assumption as they departed as absurd.
The French Revolution came about from circumstances of long-standing abuses of power by the French monarchy and the church. The American Revolution came about as a resistance to new impositions on the colonies by the British monarchy after a long-standing period of hands-off development. The two revolutions were entirely different in their causes, and in the character of their responses.
The French Revolution involved not only killing the leadership, it also installed a totalitarian government – the Third Estate – in its place. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
On 10 June 1789 Abbé Sieyès moved that the Third Estate, now meeting as the Communes (English: “Commons”), proceed with verification of its own powers and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them. They proceeded to do so two days later, completing the process on 17 June.[6] Then they voted a measure far more radical, declaring themselves the National Assembly, an assembly not of the Estates but of “the People.” They invited the other orders to join them, but made it clear they intended to conduct the nation’s affairs with or without them.
and see:
The Committee of Public Safety came under the control of Maximilien Robespierre, a lawyer, and the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror (1793-1794). According to archival records, at least 16,594 people died under the guillotine or otherwise after accusations of counter-revolutionary activities.[12] A number of historians note that as many as 40,000 accused prisoners may have been summarily executed without trial or died awaiting trial.[12][13] The slightest hint of counter-revolutionary thoughts or activities (or, as in the case of Jacques Hébert, revolutionary zeal exceeding that of those in power) could place one under suspicion, and trials did not always proceed according to contemporary standards of due process.
Though the French were inspired by the Americans to throw off their monarch oppressors, in America, the colonial governing structures remained in place before, during and after the Revolution. The Declaration of Independence was signed by delegates from colonial assemblies and legislatures who carried with them the consent of the governed in their colonies. When the Americans ratified the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, these processes were done by orderly assemblies of representative delegates.
French revolutionaries had no such consent from the governed. The French Revolution was another in a long line of social experiments in totalitarian government under the banner of the “will of the people” that spread throughout the European and Asian continents over the next two hundred years, and that resulted in the deaths of a several hundred million people under various state authorities. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide
The French Revolution was a socialist response to an abusive monarchy. The American Revolution was a preservation of the existing social order and a resistance to the installation of a monarchy. The American Revolution was a preservation of free political and economic circumstances that had developed indigenously in the colonies – a laissez faire economy if you will.
The French Revolution was neither the result of laissez faire economics, nor did it preserve any social or economic conditions in place prior to the revolution. It had nothing to do with capitalism, before, during or after.
The Democrats I spoke with yesterday, two commissioner candidates among them, wouldn’t even begin to question their assumptions about the French Revolution and laissez faire economics. Such dogmatic predispositions should inspire citizens to seriously scrutinize all of the conclusions they present to voters in this election.