I love history and always have. We are definitely living in, as the Chinese proverb says, interesting times.
I would happily trade it for peace, quiet and a mountain lake which I plan to do in the near future but for now, I'll be working and writing about these interesting times.
Tragically, the sources of the current interests come from death, disease, and opportunistic destruction at the hands of revolutionaries that stick their heads up from time to time to keep us off balance. We, in our western comforts are never prepared for people seeking to destabilize our lives on a large and continuous basis, like we've witnessed all over America lately.
A little more knowledge would have suited us better. No wonder so many History teachers identify as "frustrated". No one cares to learn these things anymore. Test, anyone? I thought not. This is very much our problem in America, though. No one is a passionate enough student of History (capital H intended out of respect) to see that these times are a recurrence of times since our founding as a nation. France during their revolution has many parallels to the streets in these fractious United States today!
To those of you who may know who Maximilien Robespierre was, we may even have a modern parallel in self proclaimed "Trained Marxist" Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. More about that connection later.
Make no mistake about one thing: Revolutions are not all the same. There is no similarity between the American Revolution that created this nation and the French Revolution that resulted in the overthrow of the French aristocracy, the King and Queen, the Reign of Terror and Napoleon Bonaparte.
"What's this got to do with the price of sushi in San Francisco?", you may be asking. Well, let me explain.
If you watch, listen to, or read the news at all in this country you are aware of the turmoil surrounding the Covid19 virus and later on the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and other African Americans in other parts of the United States by white people this year, under the color of law, to use a legal phrase.
In 1791 Paris, Robespierre became the face and voice of a reasonable sounding agenda for universal voting rights for men (a giant leap ahead in a country where only male aristocrats had a voice), the elimination of the celibate priesthood (France being heavily Catholic at the time) and the rights of citizens to carry arms to defend themselves against tyranny. He also supported the elimination of slavery and the slave trade in the French colonies.
Sounds like they had much in common with America at the time, doesn't it? Indeed, we had American ambassadors there at the time observing these events and reporting them back to the President.
Fast forward about 230 years to America and we have the face and voice of a different revolution for modern times: Patrisse Cullors. Whereas we know much about the privileged upbringing and education of Robespierre going back through his ancestry a couple of hundred years before his birth, we know little about Ms. Cullors who is said to have been born into poverty in California in 1983.
Like she says of herself though, she is a trained Marxist and she has been at it for a long time.
Having been kicked out of her Jehovah's Witnesses parents home at the age of 16 when she told them she was a lesbian, somehow she became indoctrinated as a Community Organizer and won a Fulbright Scholarship, earning degrees from UCLA and USC in the process. Not minimizing this great accomplishment, but how does this happen without a lot of adult inputs and focus from caring mentors?
Robespierre was well known by the time he came to prominence during the French Revolution. A highly regarded young lawyer, he seemed bred for leadership. Both Cullors and Robespierre argue with great fervor their position of moral rightness based on democratic principles that border on the religious, but these hide themselves in Marxist ideology.
Now, Marx had not even been born when the French Revolution was afoot but the ideas were no less prevalent. The insurrectionary Paris Commune took the reigns of government and many of the ideas were radical, anarchist, and designed to completely overthrow the old order of religion and monarchy.
There is much in the Black Lives Matter movement and Antifa that resemble what occurred in France back then. Ms. Cullors has made speeches in the last couple years that strongly identify with Marxist thought. She strongly identifies with other Marxists: Lenin, members of the Weather Underground, Mao Zedong, the Black Panthers, Angela Davis, and others. She is not shy about it.
You might have noticed that the violence that has laid hold of major cities in America has not let up since the death of George Floyd. They may not, either. This being an election year makes that even more problematic. Like Orwell said in 1984: "The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous".
This is in the nature of revolutions. They seek weak points in a nation and attack relentlessly until a foothold is achieved. It is true throughout history. What concerns me is no one seems to take notice of how history once again repeats itself, along with a cast of characters behaving in the same way.
Cullors calls herself an abolitionist but this word doesn't mean what any of us think it does anymore. Our history taught us that an abolitionist is one who believed in the destruction of slavery and the slave trade.
Ms. Cullors has extended this to include the abolition of police, prisons, and militarization of a non-descript form but based on the " black-led anti-colonial struggle in the United States and the Americas".
To accomplish this kind of abolition is nothing short of revolutionary and there are many who support this. In Chicago over the weekend, thousands of looters went through high-end stores and a Tesla dealership to steal unknown quantities and dollar amounts of goods while police were called off. "The goods are insured" and "this is reparations for us" some of the looters were heard to say as they fled without police intervention.
Today, Seattle's Police Chief resigned. I believe more Chiefs in major cities will resign than deal with the defund movement.
This is what happens in revolutions. In Paris 230 years ago, chaos eventually took over and a Reign of Terror in two waves took hold over several years. Robespierre, the principle leader of the revolution, from his seat as the head of the ironically named Committee of Public Safety held trials where no evidence was presented, and most by the end were guilty because they were accused. Tens of thousands were guillotined.
Prove me wrong, but there is a lot of that going on here today in the streets of America, absent the mass executions. Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Louisville, Minneapolis are just examples of where the Marxist fires are burning hottest.
Study your leaders, your candidates and their positions really hard this year friends. If you don't know their past and their positions, you don't know your future.
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