When Keke notes:
The ideology was the repository of the true and the good, the key to the welfare of humanity. Its enemies had to be exterminated without mercy because they stood in the way. As the ideologues saw it, the future of mankind was a high enough stake to justify any deed that served their purpose. As Loomis puts it, “[A]ll who played a role in the drama . . . believed themselves motivated by patriotic and altruistic impulses. All . . . were able to value their good intentions more highly than human life. . . . There is no crime, no murder, no massacre that cannot be justified, provided it be committed in the name of an Ideal.”it is to presage a comparison between the French ideology and that of Communism, Nazism and Islamofascism. The Pan Arab socialists who thought they could ride the tiger of a fundamentalist Islam seem to have made a serious error. They might have reflected that the Jacobins enjoyed not just Robespierre but Napoleon after for all their troubles.
One might think that an ideology which worships Reason as its goddess would have a little better foresight.
4 comments:
Skook,
I can understand coming up with liberté, fraternité, egalité contra Hobbes' bellum omnium contra omnes. The intellectual ferment which the explosion in natural science coupled with the German 'higher criticism' engendered allowed for a breadth of utopian speculation unlike any ever seen before.
I just don't understand why the vision of 'reason' espoused was, from the onset, so detached from observable reality. Calling wolves sheep and putting them to graze with the flock just hasn't worked out very well - and won't. Burke had it on the first pass.
Conservatives are like that.
As to the French, we'll see how long they leave the wolves alone - and what excuses they expound when they get rid of them.
The totalitarian impulse runs deep and dark in our species. The dustbin of history is filled with fiery-eyed idealists who saw the one true way and, rationalizing that ends justify the means, took it upon themselves to give thumbs up or down to mere mortals like ourselves.
There is no honor
I am still mulling over this quote from the historican Marc Bloch that appears in a recent homage that Gallia Watch has translated:
"There are two categories of Frenchmen who will never understand the history of France: those who refuse to be moved by the memory of the consecration of Reims, and those who read without emotion the story of the celebration of the Federation.(1) It doesn't matter very much what their principles are. Their impermeability to the most beautiful outpourings of collective enthusiasm is enough to condemn them" (Strange Defeat, p. 646).
...
(1)The consecration of Reims refers to the crowning of the Kings of France in the city of Reims. The coronation had the blessings of the Pope, and was a sacred event.
The "Fête de la Féderation" took place on July 14, 1790, one year after the storming of the Bastille and was an enthusiastic gathering of citizens and "federates" celebrating loyalty to the Constitution.
That's a nice piece, Sissy. I suppose if you count the Spartans the totalitarian urge does have quite a bit of history. 'Course, they weren't much in the idealism business.
I suppose it takes a Frenchman to murder for brotherhood.
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