Re: CHAT: Bastille day

On Monday, July 19, 2004, at 06:47 , Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> [This is the last post I would like to make on-list.  But all are
> welcome to email off-list.]
>
> From:    Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
> On Saturday, July 17, 2004, at 01:27 , Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
>>> 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.
[snip]

>>> 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!
>
> So, have you yourself studied the contemporary accounts?  I, for
> my part, have just finished reading Simon Schama's 948 page account
> of the revolution until the Thermidorean Reaction.
{groan} If you're relying on Simon Schama, then I don't think you & I will
agree.

[snip]
>>> But that to me is almost beside the point. Celebrating its fall would be
>>> tantamount to Russians' celebrating the abdication of Nicholas II
[snip]
>> Completely irrelevant.
>
> No, not irrelevant.  It's relevant because the question at hand was
> whether a symbol of a kind of change should be celebrated, even
> when the reality is that that symbol represented change to *more* evil
> than its predecessor.
The symbol did not and, indeed, could not represent 'The Terror' - the
symbol no longer existed then. The Bastille had been completely demolished.
  July 14th celebrates the uprising of the ordinary people of Paris as they
stormed the Bastille - a building which symbolized the tyranny of the the
preceding centuries. It does not celebrate or claim to celebrate the
Terror of 1793-94, nor the first consulate, nor the Napoleonic Empire, nor
anything else that came after.

[snip]
> and Napoleon and his wars of world-domination.   *Those* regimes that
> followed the Old Regime and were, I was arguing, much, much worse than
> the prior one,
Well, I hate to inform you of this but many people in this world believe
the US is engaged in wars of world-domination. My Iraqi, who is an
extremely liberal Muslim, sees the recent US (& Brit) adventure in Iraq as
part of this. If, she argues, the US had wanted to get rid of Saddam they
would've done so long ago; he was kept in power, she says, because it was
convenient for the US to clip his wings after Gulf War I but allow him to
keep control of the main part of Iraq. Now he longer serves their purpose,
  he has to go.

Many of my students are of Middle East origin and altho most, probably all,
  condemn 9/11 and were happy to see the Taliban overthrown, they remain
very suspicious of US intentions and see it as engaged in wars of
world-domination.

One reason that MacDonald's raises hackles so often is not because of what
it does & does not sell; it's because in the eyes of many it is a _symbol_
of US global dominance.

I hasten to add, that I do *not* share this view of the US, but before you
condemn Napoleon as one of the 'bad' after-effects of the French
revolution, I think you should stop and consider how some see the history
of your own country after its revolution.

>> By the logic of your position, you should not celebrate July 4th either.
>
> On the contrary, the United States has never, ever suffered anything
> like the evils perpetrated systematically on a massive scale by those
> of the Revolution.
Tell that to the native American Indians.

Nor do I recall the slaves of the southern plantations discovering that
all men are born equal. Of course, my knowledge is poor & I may have got
it wrong, but I though it took a civil war before slavery was abolished.
Even then my understanding is that Afro-Americans did not find that all me
are born equal. Again, I've probably misunderstood history, but we have
impression over here that the southern States practiced segregation (i.e.
apartheid) will into the 2nd part of the 20th cent.

 From our side of the Pond, the wars in which the US cut Mexico down to
size aren't seen as exactly just - but that's probably biased history, I
guess. Nor the support of the US for fairly brutal, military dictatorships
during much of the 20th cent. and, from time to time, the overthrow of
democratically elected governments that were 'inconvenient' - but again, I'
ve probably got that wrong.

BTW - lest any of my Americans cousins get me wrong - I am *NOT* saying
that the American Revolution was a 'bad thing'. Quite the contrary, I
think it was a 'good thing' and that, despite the blemishes, the US has
been a greater force for good than for evil. I'm merely saying that I do
not agree with Mr Weir's contention: French Revolution, false revolution
with nasty consequences & shouldn't be celebrated ~ American Revolution,
true revolution with good consequences & ought to be celebrated.

FWIW I think the 4th June and the 14th July are days to be celebrated.

>  The American Revolution was a revolution in the
> revolution in the original sense:
Yes, yes - not like the nasty French Revolution.
[snip]

>
>>> 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.
>
> The issue at hand though is what kind of ideal the Bastille has
> become.
I thought that my fellow Europeans on the other side of the channel had,
on 14th July, been celebrating both the overthrow of a system in which the
head of state could say: "L'état, c'est moi", and the ideals of liberty,
equality and fraternity on which their modern state is founded. But,
living so close, I guess I've got it wrong.

I had considered your reply to John's mail (and I heartily concur with
what John wrote) merely churlish. But from where I am it appears biased
and to be adopting double standards.

As I said above, I don't think we'll agree, so there's probably no point
in furthering the discussion. In any case, it's way off topic.

Ray
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