Obama’s Ideal Revolution

America’s current revolutionary inspiration seems to derive more from Robespierre than Madison.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

 

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5 thoughts on “Obama’s Ideal Revolution”

  1. I’m so thrilled that Victor agrees with me that French equality is equality of results. If you go to France every 2 bit civic building has “Liberte, Franternite, Egalite” on it. I was there there this summer and got in an argument with my sister (a U.S. citizen) and my brother in law (a Frenchment) over what the Egalite meant. In my mind you don’t put it on the building if you don’t mean equality of result (as opposed to equality of Opportunity, which is what I think we have in the States). What I want to see is conservatives getting more aggressive about “Economic” rights. There are no rights to anything that require someone else to pay for it. And we’re getting in a world of hurt because that isn’t clear to the general population.

  2. It’s hard to believe we’re not even past the mid-term elections of this guy’s second term yet. January 2017 is a long, long ways away. Especially considering of all that’s coming unglued across the board.

    1. That’s why the Constitution should be amended to give a single 6-year term to the President. Obama would have accomplished a lot of mischief, but he would be nearly out of office.

  3. It’s an interesting phenomenon that the endless succession of “I”, “I”, “I” — or the neo-Demosthenean “I’m gonna”– which used to dominate Obama’s speeches almost to the point of parody, has been replaced by “they”, the security folks”, maybe an occasional grudging “we”.
    If you want to get to the essence of the Enlightenment ignore those social critics and gadflies like Voltaire; go straight to Rousseau and his”General Will”, the ideological base for all despotism.

  4. For every one interrested in this period, you can read the books of Stefan Zweig about Fouché and Marie Antoinette.
    It´s excellent literature.

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