The New American – The past year’s rioting, assault, arson, and vandalism should surprise no one, for violence is the closest thing leftists have to an unchanging, ever-perpetuated tradition.
It’s July 14, 1789, and a monster is born. While the First U.S. Congress is meeting across the Atlantic, Frenchmen are storming the Bastille Saint-Antoine, a Parisian fortress used as a prison. It’s the first salvo in the French Revolution, an event that later would be portrayed (at least in U.S. government schools) as the American Revolution with a French twist. But it is nothing of the sort. It’s every bit as revolutionary, no doubt — but also largely devolutionary.
Where the Founding Fathers sought to devise a system of government with man’s nature in mind, the French revolutionaries planned to alter that nature. Where George Washington famously said, “To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian,” the French revolutionaries worked to violently de-Christianize their nation. Where our second president, John Adams, cautioned that our “Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,” the French Revolution’s doctrines served to make the French people the “other,” seeking not just liberty but license. Where our Founders argued but negotiated (and had the occasional duel), the French revolutionaries ultimately ate not just enemies but their own, with the “Reign of Terror” claiming tens of thousands of lives, including that of their most (in)famous figure and leading voice, Maximilien Robespierre. They are the first leftists.
In fact, the political senses of the terms “Left” and “Right” originate with the French Revolution, with supporters of the king seated to the right of the president in its National Assembly and republicans (those wishing to create a republic, as they called it) situated to his left. Today, of course, rightists aren’t monarchists because monarchy isn’t the status quo — but, whatever the status quo is, rightists defend it. As for leftists, well, they’re still tearing the status quo down, which usually means tearing down civilization. And this still involves a “demolition of the Bastille,” as destroying institutions, whether physical or social fixtures, is their specialty….
Source: The Bloody Left: The Dark History of Untrue Believers