Re: CHAT: Bastille day

On Saturday, July 17, 2004, at 01:27 , Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> [If anyone wishes to continue discussing this, perhaps we should
> do so off-list in the interest of topicality.]
>
> From:    John Cowan <jcowan@...>
>>  The fall of the Bastille symbolizes primarily the destruction of
>> tyranny through the physical destruction of one of its most hated
>> symbols.
>> [...] The fact that Louis XV's rule represented a considerable
>> moderation of
>> what comes before it affected the timing of the French Revolution, but
>> not
>> its symbolic impact.
>
> But it wasn't really a hated symbol until extremist propagandists
> for the far Left (a term which of course did not exist until later)
> invented it.
This is absolute tosh. If you care to look at contemporary accounts, you
will discover that the fortress of the Bastille _was_, as far as the
people of Paris were concerned, a hated & feared symbol of tyranny at that
time! That's why it was stormed - duh!

> At the time of the storming of the Bastille, it was
> effectively serving as an insane asylum, since most of the 8 prisoners
Yep - but nobody had told the ordinary people that. I think you need to
learn some history.

[snip]

> But that to me is almost beside the point. Celebrating its fall would be
> tantamount to Russians' celebrating the abdication of Nicholas II who
> was even more unwilling to relinquish power than Louis XVI.  During
> Nicholas II's entire reign, approximately 6,000 people were executed
> for political crimes, which sounds, and is, bad. But then you realize that
> the Bolsheviks had already far surpassed that number in the first *six
> months* of their reign,
Completely irrelevant.

> Celebrating such events is, IMHO, to close one's eyes to vast political
> crimes committed by later regimes and to buy into their propaganda
> out of political convenience.
I see - ever since 1789, France has been plagued with vast political
crimes & the ignorant French are the victims of political propaganda.

I suspect it's quite lost on you that it might celebrate the ideal of
'liberty, equality & fraternity'. The fact that subsequent regimes did not
always live up to the ideal does not mean that the ideal should not be
celebrated.

By the logic of your position, you should not celebrate July 4th either.

> We should not have to choose between
> two evils. But there were clear practical differences between these two,
> and if we are going to celebrate anything at all, surely we should
> celebrate the *lesser* of two evils.
IMO we should never celebrate evil, whether lesser or greater. However, I
have no problem in celebrating symbols of ideals; they surely cause us to
reflect on those ideals and measure whether we are still keeping them
alive.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com    (home)
raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk   (work)
===============================================
"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

Reply