The French Revolutions and the Bureaucracy of Terror

One among many misconceptions that people hold to is to think and speak of the "French Revolution". In fact the French Revolution wasn't "a revolution"; it was a SERIES of revolutions - comprising a larger revolution. Storms within a storm if you will. But at the same time a revolutionary triumph of bureaucracy. For the French Revolutions were bureaucracy's golden moment.

Something worth contemplating is just how many of the leading revolutionaries ended their careers beneath the guillotine: Robespierre, Danton, Hébert, Saint-Just, Fouquier-Tinville, Carrier, Phillipe "Egalité", Chaumette, Hérault, Couthon, Desmoulins, Brissot, and many others.

Quite a few ladies too: Olympe de Gouges, Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday, Lucille Desmoulins, Marie Hébert, etc. These women wanted "emancipation" - from the patriarchy of their day - and their pleas were heard by Madame Guillotine.

In another place and time few of the Revolutionary notables would have become noteworthy. Mediocrities and knaves for the most part (though Saint-Just showed some ability as a general). But in their inmost souls they were bureaucrats. And more than that - bureaucrats whose caged demons were quickly and mysteriousy freed. Imagine accountants suddenly handed powers of life and death and you'll have the idea.

Something else worth contemplating is how the French got rid of their king... only to be saddled with an emperor. An Italian emperor at that. An emperor who led the French into a disastrous campaign in Russia. Losing half his army of 450,000 men along the way. Yet who is someone that France still reveres today, for the bureaucratic sense of self he gave them.

BTW, when looking at casualty numbers (or any information for that matter) in Wikipedia view them sceptically, as these are often wrong. As just one example, in the Wikipedia article on Napoleon's invasion of Russia, they have the Russian Army suffering a *100%* casualty rate. I often come across irregularities of some sort there.

Anyway, the 1790's was certainly an exciting time to be French. Never before had the dream of liberty, equality and fraternity appeared more real or attainable. The oppressed, over-taxed citizenry, unhappy women, an effete, out of touch ruling class, and a Church hierarchy that often was more concerned about their perks than their flocks (does any of this sound familiar) all collided in a unique and terrible epic. That the cheers of "Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!" soon devolved into a terroristic bureaucracy is hardly surprising to thoughtful students of manunkind.

And two hundred thirty years later the Revolutions' political shockwaves still reverberate around the World. Take a look-see at America today as just one example then tell me where I'm wrong.

Will the parasitized peoples of the World rise up against their parasitizers with bureaucracies of terror of their own? Will Nazi-like bureaucracies quickly spring up out of the clamorings of the masses for a Fuhrer? Will Russia become God's scourge of the Bureaucratic World Order? Whatever comes, and however it comes, something is coming. You can feel it.

So my friends, a question: when the bill for our time's foolishness finally comes due... and it will come due... how will you respond?


Fitz