“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for

CJKent (Banned)
“The more a person needs to be right, the less certain he is...”
Title says it all.

16 comments

  • CC99
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    6 years ago
    Thomas Jefferson lived in the 18th century where the aristocracy could literally get away with murdering poor people through simple bribery. I get what you're saying here, but the founders had much bigger problems to worry about than the ones we deal with today. The 1% in 18th century France literally paid no taxes. They owned 40% of the wealth of the country but paid nothing in taxes so the country taxed the shit out of the peasantry to the point where they couldn't afford to feed themselves.
  • CC99
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    6 years ago
    If the American 0.01% thinks a 70% tax rate sounds horrifying...

    The French peasantry in the 18th century was taxed at 80%. Even though France in the 18th century was prosperous, famines killed tens of thousands of people every year. People were forced to eat the roots of plants just to put something in their stomachs. That's why the founding fathers made our government the way it was so that we wouldn't be like Europe was at the time.
  • san_jose_guy
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    6 years ago
    Totally true. Capitalism could only have developed by breaking down existing social codes of reciprocal obligations, by the religious doctrine of Original Sin, and by driving peasants of of land by using starvation and gun point.

    Everything Marx and Engels wrote in 1848 has been shown to be understatement.

    SJG
  • CC99
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    6 years ago
    Its actually incredible that it took the French peasants as long as they did to overthrow the French monarchy, clergy, and aristocracy. Life for them was basically hell on Earth for at least a century before they overthrew the regime. Boy when they did kick them out though they did it with a bloodlust. The French Revolution as well as the few decades that followed were extremely bloody and brutal but it needed to happen. At first the European powers tried to remove the new French government, but when that failed. After that was when we saw the despotic regimes in Europe realizing they were going to have to make democratic reforms or else they'd end up like France.

    Truthfully, I'll bet it would've taken them even longer to overthrow Louis XVI if it hadn't been for the American Revolution showing them that commoners really can defeat an autocratic government.
  • san_jose_guy
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    6 years ago
    ^^^^^ Actually it was having supported the American Revolution which had bankrupted the French Monarchy, by Louis XVIth's grandfather.


    All True, and we have an avant-garde example in Maximilien Robespierre. Best student in his orphanage, sent to law school, and selected to read an address in Latin to the new king and queen.

    https://youtu.be/5pXxoyk5wOo?t=10m28s

    Maybe a little bit impatient and heavy handed with those who held a soft spot for monarchy and religion, but truly a visionary leader. We need more such today.

    Sister is frightened of her own people
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OkrYf4q…

    SJG
  • CC99
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    6 years ago
    No we do not need a Robespierre. He slaughtered a lot of completely innocent people in addition to killing anybody who didn't agree with him or thought his new regime was taking things too far. The revolutionary government for the decade that followed the revolution just killed anybody that they thought might be a threat to them.
  • san_jose_guy
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    6 years ago
    We need visionary leaders. That Robespierre grew up in an orphanage was clearly a big part of that.

    He was intolerant and impatient. Originally opposed to capital punishment, but eventually deciding that it was necessary.

    SJG
  • CC99
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    6 years ago
    Yes but he also was part of the committee that supported wholesale destruction and mass murder of the vendee region after the royalist revolt was suppressed in addition to the reign of terror.
  • san_jose_guy
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    6 years ago
    It was also the common people, thinking in reactionary ways, that wanted to restore the church and the monarchy.

    Fanon begins with the premise that decolonization is, by definition, a violent process without exception.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wretch…"

    SJG
  • CC99
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    6 years ago
    But you can't just solve these issues with mass murder. Putting down the revolt in Vendee and destroying the countryside afterward is estimated to have killed somewhere between 120,000-450,000 people with most historians agreeing on about 200,000 people being killed, with 130,000 being civilian non-combatants. That along with the reign of terror and the suppression of several other smaller revolts adds up to a major cost in human lives.

    Like I said, the French Revolution did need to happen. But it definitely could've been handled in a way that would've resulted in less bloodshed than what ended up happening.
  • san_jose_guy
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    6 years ago
    Well, things don't always go as one would hope. But taking down monarchies and other reactionary gov't usually will have to be extremely violent.

    If you try to wait for consensus, the revolution will not happen.

    Thomas Jefferson wrote glowing support for the French Revolution, and specifically for its violence.

    SJG
  • CC99
    •
    6 years ago
    Thomas Jefferson was very enthusiastic about the revolution in 1789 as was pretty much everybody in the US. When it turns bloody though, I think his support for it started to wane. I know he talked about the tree of liberty needing to be watered with blood and he's been criticized for that by historians but I think its more a matter of saying that having the bloodshed and chaos now and then having peace in the future was better than living permanently under the autocratic rule of the monarchy. I do not think we can take that as an indication, however, that he was a supporter of Robespierre so much as he thought it was better for the revolution to happen and go through the violence and chaos that comes with overthrowing a government as opposed to continuing to let the aristocracy and clergy abuse the people.

    It is true in a sense, because despite the chaos of the revolution. The revolution and the chaos in the decade following it probably didn't kill anywhere near as many people as the policies of the aristocracy resulting in mass starvation did over the course of the century.
  • san_jose_guy
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    6 years ago
    No, Jefferson wrote of his complete approval of the Reign of Terror. He say it as necessary to prevent the continuation of tyranny.

    Robespierre stood out because being raised in an orphanage and being their best student, he dispels the myth that communal homes are a bad thing. He was always clear in his vision, ideal as a revolutionary.

    There would be many upheavals in France over the next 200 years, and some of them quite violent, though I would say that most of the time there was more violence on the side of the reactionaries, than on the Left.

    SJG
  • CC99
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    6 years ago
    When ever did Thomas Jefferson voice support specifically for the reign of terror? That sounds extremely out of character for him. Yes he was a big supporter of overthrowing the monarchy but I've never seen anything to suggest he thought the reign of terror was a good thing.

    No, the revolutionary government was more violent. Some historians have compared their actions in Vendee to an ideological genocide. Although this is controversial.

    Ultimately though, placing all the tax burden on France's peasantry during the century before being overthrown probably was more indirectly violent though in that a lot more French peasants starved to death over the course of time as a result of their policies than were directly killed by the revolutionary government. But the revolutionary government from 1792-1799 was honestly more ruthless than the monarchy was in terms of shooting civilians, drowning them, and chopping off heads.

    Robespierre was a hypocrite is what it amounted to. You can't pretend to be a supporter of liberty and democracy while ordering the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Those two things are a direct contradiction.
  • san_jose_guy
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    6 years ago
    Supported it in his letters coming back from France, and which are in his biographies.

    Usually over throwing a monarchy is not non-violent. When the Declaration of Independence was written, war had already been raging for over a year. That document certainly only would have fanned the flames.

    Reactionaries were violent starting with Napoleon, then with Louie Napoleon III, and then with the crushing of the Paris Commune, and then with La Cagoule, and then with Laval and his Militia.

    A supporter of Liberty and Democracy has to be willing to defend Liberty and Democracy. He only went for executions because the Guillotine was presented as non-violent. Stupid, but that is how things go. Those who were against the revolution wanted to re-establish the monarchy, or empire, and the church.

    We ritually abuse children and adults horribly in the mental health system and in the autism industry. These things are to us what the Guillotine was to French Revolutionaries.

    3 major revolutions, American, French, and Russian, each more extreme than the previous, and none ever considered as non-violent.

    Mexico
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Execut…

    You just try to do what seems right.

    https://www.amazon.com/Resistance-versus…

    https://www.amazon.com/Purge-Purificatio…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_…

    SJG

    Gary Clark Jr. - Bright Lights
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_ZeDn-h…

    Joe Bonamassa - If Heartaches Were Nickels LIVE at the Beacon Theatre
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEnLwMVx…

    Robin Trower - Long Misty Days (1976)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N-L_kPc…
  • san_jose_guy
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    6 years ago
    Its not that far back that Germany got itself handed a new Constitution. It allows Universal Jurisdiction for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanities prosecutions. And even NGO's can bring indictments. They already have some on prominent Americans.

    I believe that Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions will be indicted in the International Court over the family separations at our Southern border. I don't think the EU would hand out any death sentences, but the sentences could still be severe.

    SJG
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