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If realists ignore the inevitability of revolution, idealists close their eyes to the problems of revolutionary upheavals in societies that have difficult histories, deep social divisions, and poor short term economic prospects.  Unfortunately the countries most likely to experience revolutions are usually the countries that lack the preconditions for Anglo-American style relatively peaceful revolutions that end with the establishment of stable constitutional order.  If things were going well in those countries, they would not be having revolutions.

The difficulty American policymakers have in coming to grips with the recurring phenomenon of foreign revolutions is rooted in America’s paradoxical world role.  We are not just the world’s leading revolutionary nation; we are also the chief custodian of the international status quo.  We are upholding the existing balance of power and the international system of finance and trade with one hand, but the American agenda in the world ultimately aims to transform rather than to defend.

Revolutionary powers have a tougher job; building the future is harder work than holding on to the past.  This is particularly true in the American case; the global transformation we seek is unparalleled for depth, complexity and scale.

We are not sure how this revolutionary transformation works.  We know that it involves liberal political change: governments of law rather than of men and legitimacy derived from the consent of the governed as measured in regular and free elections.  We also know that involves intellectual and social change: traditional religious ideas must make room for the equality of the sexes and the rights of religious minorities.  Property rights must be rooted in law and protected by an independent judicial system.  While governments have a role in the economy, the mechanisms of the market must ultimately be allowed to work their way.

We are trying to carry out a vast reordering of global society even as we preserve the stability of the international political order: we are trying to walk blindfolded on a tightrope across Niagara Falls — while changing our clothes.

the United States has been doing two things for more than 200 years: getting foreign revolutions wrong, but somehow still pushing its global revolution forward.  America’s success as a conservative revolutionary power on a global scale depends less on the clever policies of our presidents and our secretaries of state, and more on the creativity and dynamism of American society as a whole.

But French was a colonial rival of Britain, and while arguably Europe’s most prestigious nation, France had suffered humiliating defeats to the British in the Seven Years War - especially its American theatre, the French-Indian War - only years earlier.

France was looking for any way to boost its own reputation while undermining Britain's, and helping the colonists to independence looked like a perfect way of doing this. The fact that some of the revolutionaries had fought France in the French- Indian war scant years earlier was expediently overlooked.

colonists would soon throw the British out, and then France and Spain had to unite and fight Britain for naval dominance.Covert Assistance

Then news arrived of defeats suffered by Washington and his Continental Army in New York. With Britain seemingly on the rise, Vergennes wavered, hesitating over a full alliance and afraid of pushing the colonies back to Britain, but he sent a secret loan and other aid anyway. Meanwhile, the French entered negotiations with the Spanish, who could also threaten Britain, but who were worried about colonial independence.

In December 1777 news reached France of the British surrender at Saratoga, a victory which convinced the French to make a full alliance with the revolutionaries and to enter the war with troops.

On February 6th, 1778 Franklin and two other American commissioners signed the Treaty of Alliance and a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with France. This contained a clause banning either Congress or France making a separate peace with Britain and a commitment to keep fighting until US independence was recognized. Spain entered the war on the revolutionary side later that year.

France was now able to threaten British shipping and territory around the globe, preventing their rival from focusing fully on the conflict in the Americas. Part of the impetus behind Britain’s surrender after Yorktown was the need to hold the remainder of their colonial empire from attack by other European nations, such as France

The commanders were carefully selected, men who could work effectively with both themselves and US commanders; however, the leader of the French army, Count Rochambeau, didn’t speak English

There were problems in working together at first

But overall the US and French forces co-operated well – although they were often kept separated – and certainly when compared to the incessant problems experienced in the British high command. French forces attempted to buy everything they couldn’t ship in from locals rather than requisition it, and they spent an estimated $4 million worth of precious metal in doing so, further endearing themselves to locals.

Arguably the key French contribution came during the Yorktown campaign

France supplied arms, munitions, supplies, and uniforms. French troops and naval power were also sent to America,

Many in Britain felt that France was their primary enemy, and should be the focus; some even suggested pulling out of the US colonies entirely to focus on their neighbor.

Despite British attempts to divide France and Congress during peace negotiations, the allies remained firm – aided by a further French loan – and peace was reached in the Treaty of Paris in 1783 between Britain, France, and the United States.

The financial pressures France faced were only made worse by the cost of pushing the US into being and victory, and these finances would now spiral out of control and play a large role in the start of the French Revolution in 1789. France thought it was harming Britain by acting in the New World, but the consequences affected the whole of Europe just a few years later.

Mao’s model is instructive in another way. It shows you what happens when a mob is actually quietly supported by elites, who use it to advance their own goals. The Red Guards did what they did — to their friends, and parents, and teachers — in the spirit of the Communist regime itself.

bram X. Kendi, the New York Times best seller who insists that everyone is either racist or anti-racist, now has a children’s book to indoctrinate toddlers on one side of this crude binary

Revolutionary moments also require public confessions of iniquity by those complicit in oppression.

These now seem to come almost daily. I’m still marveling this week at the apology the actress Jenny Slate gave for voicing a biracial cartoon character. It’s a classic confession of counterrevolutionary error: “I acknowledge how my original reasoning was flawed and that it existed as an example of white privilege and unjust allowances made within a system of societal white supremacy … Ending my portrayal of ‘Missy’ is one step in a life-long process of uncovering the racism in my actions.” For Slate to survive in her career, she had to go full Cersei in her walk of shame.

They murdered and tortured, and subjected opponents to public humiliations — accompanied by the gleeful ransacking of religious and cultural sites. In their attack on the Temple of Confucius, almost 7,000 priceless artifacts were destroyed. By the end of the revolution, almost two-thirds of Beijing’s historical sites had been destroyed in a frenzy of destruction against “the four olds: old customs, old habits, old culture, and old ideas.” Mao first blessed, then reined in these vandals.

take this position voiced on Twitter by a chemistry professor at Queen’s University in Canada this week: “Here’s the thing: If whatever institution you are a part of is not COMPLETELY representative of the population you can draw from, you can draw only two conclusions. 1) Bias against the underrepresented groups exists or 2) the underrepresented groups are inherently less qualified.”

Other factors — such as economics or culture or individual choice or group preference — are banished from consideration.

Revolutions also encourage individuals to take matters in their own hands. The distinguished liberal philosopher Michael Walzer recently noted how mutual social policing has a long and not-so-lovely history — particularly in post–Reformation Europe, in what he has called “the revolution of the saints.”

Revolutionaries also create new forms of language to dismantle the existing order. Under Mao, “linguistic engineering” was integral to identifying counterrevolutionaries, and so it is today.

The use of the term “white supremacy” to mean not the KKK or the antebellum South but American society as a whole in the 21st century has become routine on the left, as if it were now beyond dispute.

The word “women,” J.K. Rowling had the temerity to point out, is now being replaced by “people who menstruate.”

The word “oppression” now includes not only being herded into Uighur reeducation camps but also feeling awkward as a sophomore in an Ivy League school.

The word “racist,” which was widely understood quite recently to be prejudicial treatment of an individual based on the color of their skin, now requires no intent to be racist in the former sense, just acquiescence in something called “structural racism,” which can mean any difference in outcomes among racial groupings. Being color-blind is therefore now being racist.

And there is no escaping this. The woke shift their language all the time, so that words that were one day fine are now utterly reprehensible.

You can’t keep up — which is the point. (A good resource for understanding this new constantly changing language of ideology is “Translations From the Wokish.”) The result is an exercise of cultural power through linguistic distortion.

So, yes, this is an Orwellian moment

It’s not a moment of reform but of a revolutionary break, sustained in part by much of the liberal Establishment.

Even good and important causes, like exposing and stopping police brutality, can morph very easily from an exercise in overdue reform into a revolutionary spasm. There has been much good done by the demonstrations forcing us all to understand better how our fellow citizens are mistreated by the agents of the state or worn down by the residue of past and present inequality.

But the zeal and certainty of its more revolutionary features threaten to undo a great deal of that goodwill.

The movement’s destruction of even abolitionist statues, its vandalism of monuments to even George Washington, its crude demonization of figures like Jefferson, its coerced public confessions, its pitiless wreckage of people’s lives and livelihoods, its crude ideological Manichaeanism, its struggle sessions and mandated anti-racism courses, its purging of cultural institutions of dissidents, its abandonment of objective tests in higher education (replacing them with quotas and a commitment to ideology), and its desire to upend a country’s sustained meaning and practices are deeply reminiscent of some very ugly predecessors.

But the erasure of the past means a tyranny of the present. In the words of Orwell, a truly successful ideological revolution means that “every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

We are not there yet. But unless we recognize the illiberal malignancy of some of what we face, and stand up to it with courage and candor, we soon will be.

Many of the seminal works of literature, history, philosophy, science and theology were revolutionary in their respective ages

Like revolutionary ideas today, the ideas of yesterday were provocative and, in many cases, much more consequential

Revolutionary figures of the past give us insight into the present and allow for reflection on the consequences of their choices

That’s one of the virtues of the classics: They are a means of considering what is true without invoking the blind partisanship that encourages thoughtless action

There is nothing we need more today than the cultivation of reason and understanding.

Education based on values, logic and discipline isn’t Republican—it’s timeless

Many of the seminal works of literature, history, philosophy, science and theology were revolutionary in their respective age

Like revolutionary ideas today, the ideas of yesterday were provocative and, in many cases, much more consequential.

Revolutionary figures of the past give us insight into the present and allow for reflection on the consequences of their choices.

one of the virtues of the classics: They are a means of considering what is true without invoking the blind partisanship that encourages thoughtless action. There is nothing we need more today than the cultivation of reason and understanding.

Education based on values, logic and discipline isn’t Republican—it’s timeless.

“These are always situations which, as everybody here knows, have the ability, if not properly guided, to get out of control. I’m appreciative for the quick and appropriate response of the Iranian authorities.”

In fact, it is clear that today this kind of issue was able to be peacefully resolved, and officially resolved, and that is a testament to the critical role that diplomacy plays in keeping the country safe, secure and strong.”

The US defence secretary, Ash Carter, said: “I am pleased that 10 US navy sailors have departed Iran and are now back in US hands. I want to personally thank secretary of state John Kerry for his diplomatic engagement with Iran to secure our sailors’ swift return. Around the world, the US navy routinely provides assistance to foreign sailors in distress, and we appreciate the timely way in which this situation was resolved.”

The Revolutionary Guards patrol Iranian waters in the Gulf, especially near the strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes in tankers.

The swift release of the Americans contradicted speculation that the hardline Revolutionary Guards were seeking to sabotage improving relations between Iran and the west days before the planned implementation of the nuclear deal reached in Vienna in July

In an unusual move, the Guards last week condemned the attack by a group of hardliners on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, showing an approach in line with that of the Rouhani administration.

Once Iran finishes swapping the core of a heavy water nuclear reactor at Arak with cement, they will receive an influx of cash under the July deal.

A group of European powers opposed to these developments was now working as the First Coalition, the start of seven such groups formed to fight France before the end of 1815. Austria, Prussia, Spain, Britain and the United Provinces (Netherlands)

effectively mobilizing the whole of France into the army. A new chapter in warfare had been reached, and army sizes now began to rise greatly.

Napoleon was then given a chance to pursue a dream: attack in the Middle East, even on into threatening the British in India

Britain and France were briefly at peace but soon argued, the former wielding a superior navy and great wealth.

The relationship between Napoleon and Russia began to fall apart, and Napoleon resolved to act quickly to overawe the Russian tsar and bring him to heel. To this end, Napoleon gathered what was probably the largest army ever assembled in Europe, and certainly a force too big to adequately support. Looking for a quick, dominant victory, Napoleon pursued a retreating Russian army deep into Russia, before winning the carnage that was the Battle of Borodino and then taking Moscow.

But it was a pyrrhic victory, as Moscow was set alight and Napoleon was forced to retreat through the bitter Russian winter, damaging his army and ruining the French cavalry.

With Napoleon on the back foot and obviously vulnerable, a new Sixth Coalition was organized in 1813, and pushed across Europe, advancing where Napoleon was absent, and retreating where he was present.

He was sent to the island of Elba in exile.

With time to think while exiled in Elba, Napoleon resolved to try again, and in 1815 he returned to Europe. Amassing an army as he marched to Paris, turning those sent against him to his service, Napoleon attempted to rally support by making liberal concessions. He soon found himself faced by another coalition, the Seventh of the French Revolutionary and Napoleon Wars, which included Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia.

Napoleon was defeated, retreated, and forced to abdicate once more.

The monarchy was restored in France, and the heads of Europe gathered at the Congress of Vienna to redraw the map of Europe.

Europe would not be so disrupted again until World War 1 in 1914.

Austria now tried to form an alliance that would threaten France into submission and stop the eastern rivals from fighting.

e Girondins or Brissotins) who wanted to take pre-emptive action, hoping that war would enable them to oust the king and declare a republic: the king’s failure to surrender to constitutional monarchy left the door open for him to be replaced.

there was terror in Paris. This was largely due to the fear the Prussian army would flatten Paris and slaughter the residents, a fear caused largely by Brunswick’s promise to do just that if the king or his family were harmed or insulted. Unfortunately, Paris had done exactly that: the crowd had killed their way to the king and taken him prisoner and now feared retribution. Massive paranoia and a fear of traitors also fuelled the panic. It caused a massacre in the prisons and over a thousand dead.

First Coalition, which was first between Austria and Prussia but was then joined by Britain and Spain

It would take seven coalitions to permanently end the wars now started. The First Coalition was aimed less at ending the revolution and more on gaining territory, and the French less as exporting revolution than getting a republic. More on the Seven Coalitions

many of the officers had fled the country.

(One opponent of the war was called Robespierre.

France began 1793 in a belligerent mood, executing their old king and declaring war on Britain, Spain, Russia, the Holy Roman Empire, most of Italy and The United Provinces, despite roughly 75% of their commissioned officers having left the army.

The influx of tens of thousands of passionate volunteers helped strengthen the remains of the royal army. However, the Holy Roman Empire decided to go on the offensive and France was now outnumbered

France’s government now declared a ‘Levée en Masse’, which basically mobilised/conscripted all adult males for the defense of the nation. There was uproar, rebellion and a flood of manpower, but both the Committee of Public Safety and the France they ruled had the resources to equip this army, the organization to run it, new tactics to make it effective, and it worked. It also started the first Total War and began the Terror.

The French soldiers were constantly boosted by patriotic propaganda and a huge number of texts sent out to them. France was still producing more soldiers and more equipment than its rivals,

the revolutionary government didn’t dare disband the armies and let these soldiers flood back into France to destabilize the nation, and neither could the faltering French finances support the armies on French soil. The solution was to carry the war abroad, ostensibly to safeguard the revolution, but also to get the glory and booty the government needed for support

However, the success in 1794 had been partly due to war breaking out again in the east, as Austria, Prussia, and Russia sliced up a Poland fighting to survive; it lost, and was taken off the map. Poland had in many ways helped France by distracting and dividing the coalition, and Prussia scaled down war efforts in the west, happy with gains in the east.

Britain was sucking up French colonies, the French navy being unable to work at sea with a devastated officer corps.

France was now able to capture more of the northwest coastline, and conquered and changed Holland

Prussia, satisfied with Polish land, gave up and came to terms, as did a number of other nations, until only Austria and Britain remained at war with France.

At the end of the year, the government in France changed to the Directory and a new constitution.

all aimed at Austria, the only major enemy left on the mainland

Fadavi blamed the incident on the American navigation system. “Investigation shows that [the] entry of American sailors into Iran’s territorial waters was due to mechanical problems in their navigation system and that issue is being resolved,” he said.

The two small craft briefly went missing on Tuesday after transiting the Gulf from Kuwait to Bahrain. The Pentagon said the crews ended up in Iranian custody, sparking immediate fears of escalating tensions during a week when Iran is expected to receive the first wave of sanctions relief from the landmark nuclear accords.

Plans were in place for Iran to return the crew to a US Navy vessel in international waters early on Wednesday, during daylight hours when it would be safer, a US defence official told the Associated Press. The exchange was reportedly set for 10.30am local time (7am GMT), but is yet to have happened.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that 10 Americans – including one woman – were arrested by the naval forces of the country’s powerful Revolutionary Guards after entering Iranian waters.

Fars said the two American boats were 2km inside Iranian waters when they were detained close to Farsi island, which is home to a Revolutionary Guards base.

The agency claimed GPS data on the American ships – reported to be on a training mission – also indicated they were on the Iranian side. Pentagon officials told the Associated Press the two boats drifted into Iranian waters after facing mechanical problems. Fars reported the Americans were carrying semi-heavy weaponry on board their craft.

The episode comes amid heightened regional tensions, and only hours before Barack Obama was set to deliver his final State of the Union address.

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio reacted swiftly to the reports, calling on Iran to release the US sailors and navy boats immediately. “If they are not immediately released, and the boats are not immediately released, then we know something else is at play here,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.

Paul Ryan, House speaker and the top Republican in Washington, withheld judgment, saying in a statement: “Our top priority is the safety and security of our servicemembers detained by Iran.

A US defense department official played down the incident, saying the Iranians had sent indications of the “safety and wellbeing” of the sailors.

Pentagon and Navy officials did not identify the naval craft, the number of detained sailors, their mission or a timetable for their release.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards patrol Iranian waters in the Gulf, especially near the strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway where a fifth of the world’s oil passes in tankers.

the power of the first consul was so well established that there was no hope of intervening in France. Instead, the house of Orléans became reconciled with the elder branch of the Bourbon family. Even so, Louis-Philippe never took up arms to fight with émigré forces for the royalist cause against other Frenchmen

On November 25 he married Marie-Amélie, a daughter of King Ferdinand IV of Naples and Maria Carolina of Austria. About this time there was some suggestion that Louis-Philippe should join the English forces in the Peninsular War. Maria Carolina—who held the real power in Naples and whose sister Marie-Antoinette had been executed by the French Revolutionary government—had long backed the campaign against the Revolutionary armies and Napoleon. She certainly would have supported such a move by her son-in-law, but nothing came of it, probably because Louis XVIII again feared any activity that might further the Orleanist cause.

Louis-Philippe returned to France at the First Restoration (1814). Although Louis XVIII refused to grant Louis-Philippe the style of royal highness (later allowed to him by Charles X), the king did grant Louis-Philippe the dignities traditionally held by the head of his family. More important perhaps, Louis-Philippe regained possession of the family estates and forests that had not been sold after his own emigration and his father’s execution. During the Hundred Days (1815) he returned to England instead of following the court to Ghent.

Under the second Restoration the duc d’Orléans was a steady and more or less open adherent of the liberal opposition

when Louis-Philippe had become king and his eldest son, Ferdinand-Louis-Philippe, was heir to the royal domain, he could reserve the Orléans inheritance for his other sons instead of merging it with the crown lands.

In 1830 Charles X’s attempt to enforce repressive ordinances touched off a rebellion (July 27–30) that gave Louis-Philippe his long-awaited opportunity to gain power.

The revolution that brought Louis-Philippe to power constituted a victory for the upper bourgeoisie over the aristocracy. The new ruler was titled Louis-Philippe, king of the French, instead of Philip VII, king of France. He consolidated his power by steering a middle course between the right-wing extreme monarchists (the Legitimists) on the one side and the socialists and other republicans (including the Bonapartists) on the other. The July Monarchy, with its “Citizen King,” could never command the support of all the factions, however. Its opponents resorted to political intrigue, insurrection, and even assassination plots. In July 1835 an attempt on the king’s life by Giuseppe Fieschi resulted in the deaths of 18 people and the wounding of many more, but the royal family escaped injury. Throughout Louis-Philippe’s reign, it was said that “for shooting kings there is no close[d] season.”

before abdicating in favour of his 10-year-old grandson, Henri Dieudonné d’Artois, comte de Chambord. On August 7 the provisional government of deputies and peers present in Paris declared the throne vacant. Following the terminology of the Constitution of 1791, Louis-Philippe was on August 9 proclaimed “king of the French by the grace of God and the will of the people.” A modified version of the Charter of 1814 was issued, which the new king was obliged to accept.

The death of the popular duc d’Orléans in a carriage accident in July 1842 not only grieved Louis-Philippe very deeply but also seriously weakened the dynasty. The new heir to the throne, the duke’s son Philippe d’Orléans, comte de Paris, was an infant for whom a regency had to be prearranged.

The marriage (August 1832) of his daughter Marie-Louise to Queen Victoria’s uncle Leopold I, king of the Belgians, established an excellent relationship between Paris and London, almost foreshadowing the Entente Cordiale.

The British were finally alienated by Louis-Philippe’s policy on the “Spanish marriages.” In an attempt to revive the traditional family alliance between the French and Spanish Bourbons, he had at first wanted his sons Henri d’Orléans, duc d’Aumale, and Antoine, duc de Montpensier, to marry Spanish Queen Isabella II and her sister and heiress presumptive, the infanta Luisa Fernanda, respectively. The British objected to this obvious threat of French predominance in Spain, and in 1843 Louis-Philippe agreed that Isabella should marry neither Henri nor the British nominee, Prince Albert’s cousin Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, but rather some Spanish Bourbon instead.

French opposition to the regime had become much more embittered. The industrial and agricultural depression of 1846 aroused widespread popular discontent, and Louis-Philippe’s constant refusal of any electoral reform meant that many members of the lower middle class—from whom he might still have drawn support—remained without the vote. Finally, his narrow-minded conservatism and his unwillingness to seek any solution for pressing political and social problems drove many divergent interests into union against him.

The July Monarchy was but one casualty of the great revolutionary movement that swept through Europe in 1848. In any case, a change had come to seem unavoidable in France.

The July Monarchy was really an anachronism. To the French people—for whom, whether or not they favoured the institution, monarchy meant the splendours and absolutism of the ancien régime

In power Louis-Philippe strove to implement his desire to rule as well as to reign. The political difficulties with which he was faced revealed in him the weaknesses of an obstinate man; increasingly, his only response to crises was words and theories, and ultimately inaction lost him his crown.

While the Committee of Public Safety wasn't an executive government—on August 1st, 1793, the Convention refused a motion calling for it to become the provisional government; it was the closest France had to anyone being in overall charge, and it moved to meet the challenge with utter ruthlessness.

It also presided over the bloodiest period of the revolution: The Terror.

many French citizens

only the extreme use of the guillotine against traitors, suspects, and counter-revolutionaries would solve the country's problems.

They felt terror was necessary—not figurative terror, not a posture, but actual government rule through terror. 

The Convention deputies increasingly heeded these calls.

a demonstration for more wages and bread was quickly turned to the advantage of those calling for terror

Convention agreed, and in addition voted to finally organize the revolutionary armies people had agitated for over previous months to march against the hoarders and unpatriotic members of the countryside

The sansculottes had once again forced their wishes onto and through the Convention; terror was now in force.

Law of Suspects was introduced allowing for the arrest of anyone whose conduct suggested they were supporters of tyranny or federalism, a law which could be easily twisted to affect just about everyone in the nation.

the laws passed during the Terror went beyond simply tackling the various crises.

The Bocquier Law of December 19th, 1793 provided a system of compulsory and free state education for all children aged 6 – 13

Homeless children also became a state responsibility, and people born out of wedlock were given full inheritance rights.

universal system of metric weights and measurements was introduced

an attempt to end poverty was made by using ‘suspects’ property to aid the poor.

However, it is the executions for which the Terror is so infamous

The Committee of Public Safety's counter-offensive took the terror deep into the heart of the Vendée.

However, this early phase of the terror was not, as legend recalls, aimed at nobles, who made up only 9% of the victims; clergy were 7%. Most executions occurred in Federalist areas after the army had regained control and some loyal areas escaped largely unscathed. It was normal, everyday people, killing masses of other normal, everyday people. It was civil war, not class.

During the Terror, deputies on mission began attacking the symbols of Catholicism: smashing images, vandalizing buildings, and burning vestments.

The Committee of Public Safety grew concerned about the counter-productive effects, especially Robespierre who believed that faith was vital to order. He spoke out and even got the Convention to restate their commitment to religious freedom, but it was too late. Dechristianization flourished across the nation, churches closed and 20,000 priests were pressured into renouncing their position.

14 Frimaire. This law was designed to give the Committee of Public Safety even more control over the whole of France by providing a structured 'chain of authority' under the revolutionary government and to keep everything highly centralized. The Committee was now the supreme executive and no body further down the chain was supposed to alter the decrees in any way

the law of 14 Frimaire aimed to institute a uniform administration with no resistance, the opposite of that to the constitution of 1791

It marked the end of the first phase of the terror

Robespierre, who had argued against dechristianization, had tried to save Marie Antoinette from the guillotine

He wanted a 'cleansing' of the country and committee and he outlined his idea for a republic of virtue while denouncing those he deemed non virtuous, many of whom, including Danton, went to the Guillotine.

began a new phase in the Terror, where people could be executed for what they might do, not had done, or simply because they failed to meet Robespierre's new moral standard, his utopia of murder.

The Republic of Virtue concentrated power at the Centre, around Robespierre

The Terror was now almost class based rather than against counter-revolutionaries.

It is legally and logically impossible to define one part of a national government as an international terrorist organization without applying the term to that entire government.

The Revolutionary Guards are a part of the Iranian government. If they are attacking us, they are not a terrorist organization. They’re an attacking army.

last April the State Department unilaterally designated the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist entity.

the designation was by many accounts made despite the opposition of the CIA and the Defense Department.

No thinking American would support Soleimani’s conduct. But it is also indisputable that his activities were carried out as part of his military duties. His harm to American military units was through his role as an enabler and adviser to third-country forces. This, frankly, is a reality of war.

I fought as a Marine in Vietnam. We had similar problems throughout the Vietnam War because of Vietnam’s propinquity to China, which along with the Soviet Union provided continuous support to the North Vietnamese, including most of the weapons used against us on the battlefield

China was then a rogue state with nuclear weapons. Its leaders continually spouted anti-U.S. rhetoric. Yet we did not assassinate its military leaders for rendering tactical advice or logistical assistance. We fought the war that was in front of us, and we created the conditions in which we engaged China aggressively through diplomatic, economic and other means.

the United States desperately needs common-sense leadership in its foreign policy. This is not a failure of the executive branch alone; it is the result of a breakdown in our entire foreign policy establishment, from the executive branch to the legislative branch and even to many of our once-revered think tanks.

for any closet revolutionary who has ever dreamed of overthrowing the present economic order in favour of one a little less likely to cause Italian pensioners to hang themselves in their homes, this work should be of particular interest. Because it makes the ditching of that cruel system in favour of something new (and perhaps, with lots of work, better) no longer a matter of mere ideological preference but rather one of species-wide existential necessity.

Anderson points out that we have lost so much time to political stalling and weak climate policies – all while global consumption (and emissions) ballooned – that we are now facing cuts so drastic that they challenge the fundamental logic of prioritising GDP growth above all else.

Anderson and Bows argue that, if the governments of developed countries are serious about hitting the agreed upon international target of keeping warming below 2° Celsius, and if reductions are to respect any kind of equity principle (basically that the countries that have been spewing carbon for the better part of two centuries need to cut before the countries where more than a billion people still don’t have electricity), then the reductions need to be a lot deeper, and they need to come a lot sooner.

To have even a 50/50 chance of hitting the 2° target (which, they and many others warn, already involves facing an array of hugely damaging climate impacts), the industrialised countries need to start cutting their greenhouse-gas emissions by something like 10 per cent a year – and they need to start right now.

a 10 per cent drop in emissions, year after year, is virtually unprecedented since we started powering our economies with coal. In fact, cuts above 1 per cent per year “have historically been associated only with economic recession or upheaval”, as the economist Nicholas Stern put it in his 2006 report for the British government.

Only in the immediate aftermath of the great market crash of 1929 did the United States, for instance, see emissions drop for several consecutive years by more than 10 per cent annually, according to historical data from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre

If we are to avoid that kind of carnage while meeting our science-based emissions targets, carbon reduction must be managed carefully through what Anderson and Bows describe as “radical and immediate de-growth strategies in the US, EU and other wealthy nations”. Which is fine, except that we happen to have an economic system that fetishises GDP growth above all else, regardless of the human or ecological consequences, and in which the neoliberal political class has utterly abdicated its responsibility to manage anything (since the market is the invisible genius to which everything must be entrusted).

in order to appear reasonable within neoliberal economic circles, scientists have been dramatically soft-peddling the implications of their research. By August 2013, Anderson was willing to be even more blunt, writing that the boat had sailed on gradual change. “Perhaps at the time of the 1992 Earth Summit, or even at the turn of the millennium, 2°C levels of mitigation could have been achieved through significant evolutionary changes within the political and economic hegemony. But climate change is a cumulative issue! Now, in 2013, we in high-emitting (post-)industrial nations face a very different prospect. Our ongoing and collective carbon profligacy has squandered any opportunity for the ‘evolutionary change’ afforded by our earlier (and larger) 2°C carbon budget. Today, after two decades of bluff and lies, the remaining 2°C budget demands revolutionary change to the political and economic hegemony” (his emphasis).

there are many people who are well aware of the revolutionary nature of climate science. It’s why some of the governments that decided to chuck their climate commitments in favour of digging up more carbon have had to find ever more thuggish ways to silence and intimidate their nations’ scientists

If you want to know where this leads, check out what’s happening in Canada, where I live. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper has done such an effective job of gagging scientists and shutting down critical research projects that, in July 2012, a couple thousand scientists and supporters held a mock-funeral on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, mourning “the death of evidence”. Their placards said, “No Science, No Evidence, No Truth”.

Once it was clear to Charles that British terms were nonnegotiable, then the Bourbon Family Compact of 1761, a mutual-defense treaty with France, was a piece of realpolitik, signed by the “Anglophile” Ricardo Wall.

The consequence of such an alliance was involvement in the Seven Years’ War—too late to save France.

The Treaty of Paris (1763) concluded the Seven Years’ War and destroyed France as an American power.

The Family Compact was therefore an immediate military failure, and it was only the revolt of the North American colonies against Britain that enabled Spain to recover the ground it had lost; the successful alliance with France to aid the colonists resulted in the Treaty of Versailles (1783), which gave back Sacramento, the two Floridas, and Minorca.

In 1788 Charles III, who had been the “nerve” of reform in the sense that he loyally supported able ministers, was succeeded by his son, Charles IV, a weak, amiable man dominated by a lascivious wife, María Luisa.

The volume of Spanish goods in the American trade increased 10-fold in 10 years, prompting British concern at the Spanish revival.

The problems of imperial defense were thus temporarily solved by British weakness after 1765. The positive side of Charles III’s imperial policy was an attempt to create an efficiently administered colonial empire that would provide the crown with increased revenues and with a closed market for the exports of an expanding Spanish economy, a program known as the “Bourbon Reforms.”

The main attack of the regalists fell on the Jesuit order.

The question arises of the extent to which the policies of Charles III resulted from the acceptance by his servants of the precepts of the Enlightenment.

When the French Revolution exposed the dangers of progressive thought, the traditionalist cause was immensely strengthened, and the Inquisition appeared to the crown itself to be a useful instrument to control the spread of dangerous ideas

the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars put unbearable pressures on a weak power. Reform was now dangerous. Neutrality was impossible; alliance with either France or the anti-revolutionary coalitions engineered by Britain proved equally disastrous

Spain had no alternative but to declare war on France after the execution of Louis XVI in 1793. The war was popular but disastrous; in 1794 the French armies invaded Spain, taking Bilbao, San Sebastián (Donostia–San Sebastián), and Figueres (Figueras).

Napoleon had lost all faith in Godoy and Spain as an ally; the “dirty intrigues” of Ferdinand, prince of Asturias and heir to the throne, against his father and Godoy led Napoleon to consider drastic intervention in Spanish affairs

compelled the abdication of Charles IV and the dismissal of Godoy. Napoleon summoned both the old king and Ferdinand VII to Bayonne, where both were compelled to abdicate. The Spanish throne was then offered to Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother.

The Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium) and the left bank of the Rhine had been major battlefields in the war against the coalition, and French victories in those sectors were followed by military occupation, requisitions, and taxation but also by the abolition of feudalism and similar reforms. In 1795 Belgium was annexed to France and divided into departments, which would henceforth be treated like other French départements.

Strategic considerations and French national interest were the main engines of French foreign policy in the Revolutionary decade but not the only ones. Elsewhere in Europe, native patriots invited French support against their own ruling princes or oligarchies.

By 1797 Prussia and Spain had made peace with France, but Austria and Britain continued the struggle.

abortive revolutionary movements had already occurred in the Austrian Netherlands and in the United Provinces (Dutch Netherlands). When French troops occupied their country in 1795, Dutch "Patriots" set up the Batavian Republic, the first of what became a belt of "sister republics" along France’s borders.

In the process, northern Italy was liberated from Austria, and the Habsburgs were driven to the peace table, where they signed the Treaty of Campo Formio on 26 Vendémiaire, year VI (October 17, 1797).

The treasure coming from the sister republics was desperately needed in Paris since French finances were in total disarray.

In 1797 the government finally engineered a painful return to hard currency and in effect wrote down the accumulated national debt by two-thirds of its value in exchange for guaranteeing the integrity of the remaining third.

He believed in limited government, gradual reform, parliamentary sovereignty and, with caveats and qualifications, individual rights. But he also believed that to secure rights, it wasn’t enough simply to declare them on paper, codify them in law and claim them as entitlements from a divine being or the general will. The conditions of liberty had to be nurtured through prudent statesmanship, moral education, national and local loyalties, attention to circumstance and a healthy respect for the “latent wisdom” of long-established customs and beliefs.

Trump’s real legacy, in Burke’s eyes, would be his relentless debasement of political culture: of personal propriety; of respect for institutions; of care for tradition; of trust between citizens and civil authority; of a society that believes — and has reason to believe — in its own essential decency. “To make us love our country,” he wrote, “ our country ought to be lovely.”

Then again, Burke would have been no less withering in his views of the far left. “You began ill,” he said of the French revolutionaries, “because you began by despising everything that belonged to you.”

“Rage and phrensy will pull down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation and foresight can build up in a hundred years.”

The principle of the equality of taxation was maintained, all citizens were liable. This reflected a confirmation of the abolition of feudalism and an expressed belief in “career open to talent”. There was to be both formal legal equality and equality of opportunities, holding office would depend on ability, loyalty and experience, not accident of birth.

Analysis of the massive votes in favour had undermined their credibility. The organiser of the 1800 plebiscite, Napoleon’s brother, perhaps worried at the Jacobin sympathies of many soldiers, simply added 500,000 votes to the “yes” column for the army. What is more, the system of voting was open rather than by secret ballot and the question in the plebiscite only sought approval for a decision that had already been taken.

In the government Napoleon agreed with Sieyes concept, there should be authority from above and trust from below, of the general nature of the Constitution but instead of 3 Consuls as Sieyes thought Napoleon wanted political authority in his own hand. At the end he accepted maintaining the government with 3 consuls but he named himself the First Consul and ordered that the other two would have no independent executive authority. This showed how Napoleon wanted power. He reinforced his power when in the 2 Constitution he was made the First Consul for life and in the 3 Constitution named himself Emperor. Moreover, Napoleon established effective control over the legislative process. He established a similar control over the executive. Under the Constitution he could appoint the second and third consuls, government ministers, the prefects of the departments of France and the mayor of larger communes. The first three were appointed from the national list and the last from the communal lists. At the centre there was no cabinet system, individual ministers reported directly to Napoleon. All effective decision making was concentrated in his hands, no minister or prefect, for instance, could take action unless sure that it was authorised by Napoleon. This was top-down government, centralised and authoritarian. Even at the local level, holders of government posts were appointed from above, not elected from below. Napoleon’s control of the government system was more absolute than that of the monarchy that ruled in France before 1789.

In terms of liberty, it could be argued that Napoleon fundamentally violated revolutionary principles. Whilst he allowed religious freedom by tolerating all religions, as is expressed in the Organic Articles, the hierarchies of the various churches were under his control. What is more, there was no freedom of speech. Censorship was a key element of Napoleonic rule of France, and those suspected of sedition could be tried and punished outside the normal framework of the law. Nor was there freedom of movement for workers compelled to carry their livret. It also affected Napoleon’s view about the subordinate position of women and children. Whilst a man could imprison an adulterous wife or disobedient child, a married woman had few property rights and could only sue for divorce if a husband insisted on his mistress sharing the family home.

Secondary education was largely restricted to the middle classes and sons of officers in the army. In the 37 schools that were found in France the curriculum was closed supervised. Free thinking was discouraged. Schools taught a utilitarian curriculum based around France, mathematics, history, geography and science and inculcated both military values and loyalty to the regime. Alongside this state system, independent and Catholic schools continued to flourish, despite high fees. In order to bring such schools under closer government supervision, in 1806 Napoleon set up the Imperial University, which was in some respects a kind of nineteenth-century Ofsted, to oversee the curriculum and inspect schools.

That, for me, will always be the core of conservatism. Not support for limited government or tax cuts. Not favoring open markets. Not fighting for higher defense budgets

what’s needed is not greater respect and reverence for the past but rather a radical break from it that amounts to active destruction of the corrupted present before something new and worthwhile can be built in its place

A reactionary, by contrast, is someone who thinks the world has already broken and diverged so radically from the traditions, habits, ideals, norms, and laws that prevailed in the past that the present is a wasteland with nothing worth conserving and handing down.

regeneration demands we “go forward—step by step further into decadence.” (Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” Aphorism 43)

a conservative is someone who emphasizes continuity between the present and the past, and therefore sees moral and political commonality across time and underlying the very real changes that take place throughout history

A reactionary, meanwhile, has his eyes focused on perceived moral discontinuities in history. He lives on the lookout for ruptures, fissures, and revolutions that have torn time itself asunder, separated into a Before and an After. There can be no going back, at least not directly, from the present. What we need first is a counter-revolution to turn back the tide and tear down the world that has emerged from the revolutionary exertions of morality’s mortal enemies.

they view conservatives as saps, suckers, and chumps who end up serving as handmaidens to the revolutionaries, following along behind them, urging conciliation and resignation to change. Conservatives are therefore a major part of the problem, not the solution. The point is to win, to wield ruthless, brute power like their revolutionary enemies do, though for contrary moral ends.   

“We should keep in mind that we’re only at the beginning of what AI can accomplish,” he wrote. “Whatever limitations it has today will be gone before we know it.”

“We should try to balance fears about the downsides of AI—which are understandable and valid—with its ability to improve people’s lives.”