On Social Justice

Comment by JWMJR on French Experiment with Equality.

As always our leftist friends fail to understand the differences between the success of the American Revolution and the failure of the French Revolution and how it pertains to the current (dis)order of things. It comes down to the fundamental fact that in order for the seeds of individual liberty to grow into a healthy tree of sovereign self-government it requires the fertile soil of personal responsibility.

The American Revolution and the system of government that grew out of it was successful because we already had a long history of self-government that evolved from the conditions of the 17th and 18th centuries wherein the distance to Europe was great and communications were slow. These conditions necessitated the creation of systems of self-government. They flourished and grew in spite of the economic restrictions placed upon the colonies that we solely in place for the advantage of the financial and royal elites of Britain. When the restrictions became more onerous and disadvantageous to the colonists the seeds of rebellion began to grow. Our Revolution, like all revolutions, grew more out of economic conditions than social ones. The Founders recognized that our economic success grew from individual liberty not some vague notion of social equality.

By contrast the French Revolution was a failure, not because of any lack of inspiration created by the American success, but because it quickly devolved into these vague notions of social equality rather than individual liberty and personal responsibility. Quite simply, what the French lacked was any history of self-government. So among the seeds of the tree of liberty were sown the the weeds of egalitarianism. Unfortunately these weeds flourished on the wonton bloodlust of the Jacobins. They produced the pretty but inedible flowers of emotionally appealing rhetoric but not the delicious fruits of a sustainable political economy. In the end, after all the chaos and carnage all they were left with was another tyrant who mouthed the words of liberty and made of himself an Emperor and an empire that resulted in nearly two decades of war and uncounted deaths. Then after Napoleon was gone, and the continent had been bleed of money and lives, the very same institutions and families that the revolution had sought to over throw were back in power. The great hopes of Goethe, Schiller, Von Humboldt and Beethoven for a German Constitutional Republic based on the American model were crushed at the Congress of Vienna and Russia was the dominant power on the European Continent.

Egalitarianism, such is the breeding ground of tyranny and the demagogue, be they 18th century Jacobins, 20th century fascists or our 21st century advocates of “social justice” and jihadists.