{"id":12425,"date":"2020-06-13T10:00:21","date_gmt":"2020-06-13T17:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12425"},"modified":"2020-06-12T14:42:20","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T21:42:20","slug":"the-bitter-irony-of-revolutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-bitter-irony-of-revolutions\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bitter Irony of Revolutions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p> Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The&nbsp;ancient Greeks created new words like \u201cparadox\u201d and \u201cirony\u201d to describe the wide gap between what people profess and assume, and what they actually do and suffer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Remember the blind prophet Teiresias of ancient drama. In the carnage of Athenian tragedy, he alone usually ends up foreseeing danger better than did those with keen eyesight<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a catastrophic plague and endless war, ancient democratic Athens was stripped of its majestic pretensions. Soon it was conducting mass executions \u2014 on majority votes of the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Throughout history, revolutions often do not end up as their initial architects planned. The idealists who ended the French monarchy in 1789 thought they could replace it with a constitutional republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead, they sparked a reign of terror, the guillotine, and mass frenzy. Yet the radicals who hijacked the original revolution and began beheading their enemies soon were themselves guillotined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2020\/06\/protests-coronavirus-bitter-irony-of-revolutions\/\"> Read the full article here <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The&nbsp;ancient Greeks created new words like \u201cparadox\u201d and \u201cirony\u201d to describe the wide gap between what people profess and assume, and what they actually do and suffer. Remember the blind prophet Teiresias of ancient drama. In the carnage of Athenian tragedy, he alone usually ends up foreseeing danger better [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3ep","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12436,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-cultural-revolutions-die-or-not\/","url_meta":{"origin":12425,"position":0},"title":"How Cultural Revolutions Die \u2014 or Not","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 21, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Unlike\u00a0coups or political revolutions, cultural revolutions don\u2019t just change governments or leaders. 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Schadenfreude, irony, paradox, and karma are various descriptions of what happens to revolutionaries, and unfortunately the innocent,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1350,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ancient-virtues-and-modern-sins\/","url_meta":{"origin":12425,"position":2},"title":"Ancient Virtues and Modern Sins","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Candor Aside from courage \u2014 the essential trait without which, as the ancients insisted, all other virtues are impossible \u2014 candor is now the most appreciated. Herman Cain came a long way, despite not knowing much of anything about foreign affairs and with a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Retrospective&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6403,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-israeli-spring\/","url_meta":{"origin":12425,"position":3},"title":"The Israeli Spring","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 29, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Israel's enemies are doing more damage to each other than Israel ever could. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online Israel could be forgiven for having a siege mentality \u2014 given that at any moment, old frontline enemies Syria and Egypt might spill their violence over common borders. 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