Chris Grieb Posted July 14, 2008 Share Posted July 14, 2008 This is Bastille Day.Was the French Revolution a good thing or a bad thing? Some of the Founders liked and some did not.What do you think? I like to hear some comments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted July 14, 2008 Share Posted July 14, 2008 This is Bastille Day.Was the French Revolution a good thing or a bad thing? Some of the Founders liked and some did not.What do you think? I like to hear some comments.The French never quite got it. After they declared The Rights of Man 16,000 heads rolled. Go figure.Any revolution that can produce Marat and Robespierre can't really be good. The French Revolution ate its young. The bottom lline of the French Revolution was Napoleon Bonaparte. ♠Ba'al Chatzaf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Grieb Posted July 14, 2008 Author Share Posted July 14, 2008 Bob; We agree but was the overthrow of the king a good idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted July 14, 2008 Share Posted July 14, 2008 This is Bastille Day.Was the French Revolution a good thing or a bad thing? Some of the Founders liked and some did not.What do you think? I like to hear some comments.The French on the side of the America Revolution was analogous to The Russians fighting with the allies against Germany in WWI. Disastrous consequences for France and Russia. Bad societies and governments became horrible socities and governments.--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted July 15, 2008 Share Posted July 15, 2008 Bob; We agree but was the overthrow of the king a good idea.Transforming France into a Constitutional Monarchy might have worked out better. It worked for the Brits. Instead the French got the Terror, the they got Napoleon. In subsequent years they alternated between a republic and a Constitutional Monarchy. The Frogs never really got it. We Americans are fortunate in tracing the descent of our Republic back to the brits, who by 1775, were already governed under a limited monarchy. The American struggle was not so much with the king (George the 3 rd) but with Parleiment, who would not grant the American colonies proper representation. If you want to see how we might have ended up if Parliment had been more reasonable, look at Canada. They manged to become a republic (in effect) without a revolution and without a civil war.Ba'al Chatzaf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Grieb Posted July 15, 2008 Author Share Posted July 15, 2008 Bob; I agree with Lady Thatcher at the time of the Bicentennial told the French president that the French Revolution was a bad idea. I think she got the worse seat in the house for one of the events. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted July 15, 2008 Share Posted July 15, 2008 (edited) Bob; We agree but was the overthrow of the king a good idea.Yes and no. in the 1640's a king was overthrown (Charles I) and his reign ended by the headsman axe. Then followed years of civil strife and finally the rule of Oliver Cromwell whose Protestant Puritan buddies outlawed having fun in public. No kissing, no dancing, no theater. By the time Cromwell was dead, the Brits could hardly wait to have a king again. The civil war in England was probably not as bloody as the aftermath of the French revolution, but it was bad enough. The Irish got short shrift and what happened was a direct cause of today's "unpleasantness" in Ireland. Ba'al Chatzaf Edited July 15, 2008 by BaalChatzaf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted July 15, 2008 Share Posted July 15, 2008 This is Bastille Day.Was the French Revolution a good thing or a bad thing? Some of the Founders liked and some did not.What do you think? I like to hear some comments.Bastille Day is for the French as The Fourth is for Americans and Canada Day for we Canuckistanis and so on and so forth. Big national celebrations. No one goes out into the streets to reenact The Terror or has mad guillotine parties and street dances . . . so, please decouple the idea of a French National Holiday from the idea of a Let's Celebrate the Bloodthirsty Nightmare of Revolution.That said, why not celebrate? Well, as Ba'ab points out, the French are frogs. Secondly, their commie slogan is evul: liberty, equality, fraternity, a slap in the face to Objectivist values of liberty, productivity and gated communities. Thirdly, their country is a socialist hellhole, rife with darker style people and their evul encroaching cult. Fourthly, they retain some raggy remnants of pride in themselves as a nation and culture, which should be stripped off, since they have degenerated to a state almost as evul as the socialist hellholes Sweden and Finland. Fifthly and finally, the French Revolution was bad, evul, ugly and stupid from top to bottom.Bastille Day's only pitiful value is as public spectacle, the massive military show on the Champs d'Elysees. Even then, the Russians and North Koreans arguably do a better job. If you are ever a tourist stuck in the hellhole of Paris on July 14th, make sure that you tell the French you meet that you may enjoy their parade, but revile their revolution's excesses and lack of Objectivist principles. Just so they get that straight.Mind you, what I do not understand completely is how France is still the number one tourist destination in the world. See also Bastille Day festivities in NYC in 2008. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
9thdoctor Posted July 14, 2013 Share Posted July 14, 2013 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Posted July 14, 2013 Share Posted July 14, 2013 One of the great anthems in the world.One of the greatest scenes in film, with Ingrid, one of the top four most beautiful women in the world.Now, if the French could fight like they can sing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted July 14, 2013 Share Posted July 14, 2013 One of the great anthems in the world.One of the greatest scenes in film, with Ingrid, one of the top four most beautiful women in the world.Now, if the French could fight like they can sing...Did you see that look of hero-worship in Bergman's eyes? What a great actress she was.By the way, you can get an almost brand new French Army rifle cheap. It has only been thrown down once. Also a brand new French Army watch with its hands set permanently to 11:05.Ba'al Chatzaf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caroljane Posted July 17, 2013 Share Posted July 17, 2013 "There was a young man from Marseille Who encountered a lovely Feille Wreille. She said, "after King Kong, Frenchmen just seem so wrong, And a bas le quatorze juilliet! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caroljane Posted July 17, 2013 Share Posted July 17, 2013 KENNETH TYNAN wrote this and I have just remembered his much better lines: She said, don't get me wrong, but after King Kong, you can keep your Quatorze Juiliiet! sorry Kt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GALTGULCH8 Posted July 20, 2013 Share Posted July 20, 2013 Some where I got the image in my mind that on Bastille Day the French people dragged the printing presses out into the street and destroyed them with sledge hammers.How I wish Americans understood that the central bankers have been debasing the currency for a century by printing up, not dollars, but notes which they sell to those who loan our government money by buying US Treasury Notes.Is it really over the heads of the ordinary man in the street in America to understand the simple facts of central banking?A colleague of mine is a knowledgeable psychiatrist who told me that in his estimation a man with an IQ of 100 is quite literally stupid.I think that there are many stupid people all over the spectrum and I have met many uneducated people who are able to understand basic philosophical concepts.One must be careful not to generalize to a whole people such as "the French" who are erroneously called "frogs." There are many bright French for example, Victor Hugo, Frederich Bastiat, and in our time all the members of The Students For LIberty who live in France. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caroljane Posted July 20, 2013 Share Posted July 20, 2013 Gulch,Somewhere in my head I got the idea that the liberators of the Bastille carried at their head a dead eagle they had "liberated" from a taxidermist,which turned out to be actually a buzzard, in an incomplete state of taxidermy. I got this idea from a history professor at university.People of any IQ will not get into their heads any concept they do not want in their heads. Good luck to the Students of Liberty but Central Banking is just not as sexy or scary as the Red Menace, the Yellow Peril or even the Black Death. And the human race has survived all of those, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GALTGULCH8 Posted July 20, 2013 Share Posted July 20, 2013 Daunce,<"People of any IQ will not get into their heads any concept they do not want in their heads. Good luck to the Students of Liberty but Central Banking is just not as sexy or scary as the Red Menace, the Yellow Peril or even the Black Death. And the human race has survived all of those.">As I understand it www.studentsforliberty.org is about liberty and opposition to tyranny in all its manifestations. Not limited to concerns about sound money and the unconstitutional creation of paper money monopolized by a private banking cartel we know as the Federal Reserve System. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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