The Bloody Left: The Dark History of Untrue Believers
The past year’s rioting, assault, arson, and vandalism should surprise no one, for violence is the closest thing leftists have to an unchanging, ever-perpetuated tradition.
It’s July 14, 1789, and a monster is born. While the First U.S. Congress is meeting across the Atlantic, Frenchmen are storming the Bastille Saint-Antoine, a Parisian fortress used as a prison. It’s the first salvo in the French Revolution, an event that later would be portrayed (at least in U.S. government schools) as the American Revolution with a French twist. But it is nothing of the sort. It’s every bit as revolutionary, no doubt — but also largely devolutionary.
Where the Founding Fathers sought to devise a system of government with man’s nature in mind, the French revolutionaries planned to alter that nature. Where George Washington famously said, “To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian,” the French revolutionaries worked to violently de-Christianize their nation. Where our second president, John Adams, cautioned that our “Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,” the French Revolution’s doctrines served to make the French people the “other,” seeking not just liberty but license. Where our Founders argued but negotiated (and had the occasional duel), the French revolutionaries ultimately ate not just enemies but their own, with the “Reign of Terror” claiming tens of thousands of lives, including that of their most (in)famous figure and leading voice, Maximilien Robespierre. They are the first leftists.
JBS Member or ShopJBS.org Customer?
Sign in with your ShopJBS.org account username and password or use that login to subscribe.
Subscribe Now
- 24 Issues Per Year
- Digital Edition Access
- Exclusive Subscriber Content
- Audio provided for all articles
- Unlimited access to past issues
- Cancel anytime.
- Renews automatically
Subscribe Now
- 24 Issues Per Year
- Print edition delivery (USA)
*Available Outside USA - Digital Edition Access
- Exclusive Subscriber Content
- Audio provided for all articles
- Unlimited access to past issues
- Cancel anytime.
- Renews automatically