In a recent column (language warning) James Howard Kunstler ruminates on why the French Revolution and the American Revolution, despite being very close in time, were so different in outcome. This is, of course, very relevant to our ongoing study of Revelation 11, to which I promise to return someday soon. Historians, both professional and amateur, have frequently pondered this question; Kunstler is not the first and will not be the last to do so. But he has written an important column and it deserves our commentary:
“What’s most amazing about the fiasco that was the French Revolution is that it happened at exactly the same time that the United States successfully organized themselves into an orderly and effective government following the American Revolution. George Washington was elected and sworn-in by April of 1789, with the backing of an exemplary constitution assembled by the best minds in the land. The Bastille fell in July that same year. France then fell into a years’ long orgy of beheading and chaos that went nowhere until 1799 when an artillery officer named Bonaparte put an end to it by sheer force of personality.”
Not only did the two upheavals happen at the same time, some of the same players were involved, including the Marquis de Lafayette, who had aided the American revolutionaries, and then found himself commanding the forces of Revolutionary France. And there were other Frenchman watching closely the goings on in America:
“Of course, France had assisted America in concluding our revolt against King George — surely you remember the Marquis de Lafayette from your high school history class (or has he been replaced by George Floyd?). There were plenty of Frenchmen still on the American scene during the years following the British surrender at Yorktown in the fall of 1781. Some of them must have kept tabs on the Constitutional Convention, May to September, 1787, out of which came our blueprint for managing national affairs, and not a few of these Frenchmen were active in their own revolution which kicked off two years later.”
And not only were Frenchman closely observing America’s political founding, three of the most important American founders—Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—were in France around the time of the Revolution, and at least Jefferson thought highly of the French Revolution, although Adams was very suspicious of it:
“By the way, Thomas Jefferson was in Paris from 1784 until autumn of 1789, months after the Bastille fell. He succeeded Ben Franklin as minister there to negotiate trade agreements (Ben went to London as ambassador). John Adams was also on-the-scene in Paris as our ambassador there when Jefferson arrived. These Americans met daily and chatted endlessly with France’s political players. The American Articles of Confederation were in effect then, to be replaced by the improved U.S. Constitution in 1787. The people of France, including the various elites involved in public life, royal, haut bourgeoise, lawyers, and generals, might have taken a lesson from the American experience of how to successfully come out of a political tribulation.
Except that on the most important issue, religion, priest-ridden France could never emulate America. America was Protestant and France was thoroughly Roman Catholic, having taken great care to uproot and destroy every attempt at reformation. This most crucial of differences is the sole reason why the American Revolution birthed a republic that lasted over 200 years, and France’s revolution fizzled in terror, and then a military dictatorship led by Napoleon Bonaparte, two decades of European war, and finally a reinstatement of the monarchy.
“Rewind a little to 1793 in Paris, the revolution in full swing: King Louis XVI went to the guillotine in January. The National Convention had replaced the National Assembly as the furnace of political action. The radical Jacobin faction, led by Robespierre and Saint-Just, coalesced into a power-seizing majority there. They took their name from a political club founded by anti-royalists, but their platform became increasingly extreme as the revolution lurched toward pandemonium.”
The most important of the revolutionary specifics was the overthrowing of religion. Everyone understood that the corrupt Roman Church was a very large part of the problem, so they threw it out, and attempted to replace with a cult of reason. They even replaced the seven-day week with a ten-day week of their own creation, thus doing away with the Sabbath.
They correctly diagnosed that corrupt religion was a problem, but their solution was to throw out Christianity altogether, and that could only lead to national ruin. Whenever the principles of biblical religion are banished from public life, disaster must, and always does, follow:
“During their year in power, the Jacobins turned the life of the nation upside down in their zealous quest to create a perfectly equitable society. They abolished the church (and replaced it with their own “cult of the supreme being”). They changed the week from seven days to ten days, they changed the names of all the months of the calendar. (1792 was denoted “the Year One.”) They put in price and wage controls while churning out money (paper assignats) which triggered (voila) monetary inflation! They confiscated grain from farmers all over the country. They condemned thousands (estimate: 20,000 to 40,000) of political enemies to the guillotine in their “Reign of Terror.”
But eventually the terror burnt itself out:
“By the summer of 1794 (in their renamed month of Thermidor), everybody else finally had enough of the Jacobin nightmare. On July 27, Robespierre was at the rostrum once again denouncing his enemies and crying for blood when the out-group members present started throwing food at him and shouting him down. That was the magic moment when everything flipped — the shock of recognition that the Jacobins had lost power. Just like that! The chamber fell into a melee, a lot of shoving and shouting. . . Robespierre and his cronies were chased across town to the city hall (Hôtel de Ville) and barricaded themselves inside. The mob broke through and arrested them. Somewhere in the confusion a policeman shot Robespierre in the face, shattering his jaw (no more speeches for you!). . . and the very next day, Robespierre, Saint-Just, and twenty of their associates had their appointment with “the national razor.”
And just like that, the terror was over . . . until next time. And, although it wasn’t understood by Ellen White and the early Adventists, there would be a next time; the spirit of the French Revolution would be seen again in the Russian Bolsheviks, the Chinese Moaists, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and the Marxists running the “Biden Administration” today.
“This event became known as the Thermidorian Reaction. The insane Jacobin program of terror and social derangement was swiftly abolished. Nothing like it was seen again until the Bolsheviks, the Maoists and the Khmer Rouge came along in the 20th century, and now, in our time, The Party of Chaos as led by “Joe Biden” (or whoever and whatever is behind him), with their open border, their lust for another world war, their drive for censorship, their sadistic lawfare, their race and sex hustles, their compulsive lying, and their sick destruction of every norm and boundary in daily life.”
Kunstler correctly discerns that the French Revolution ideologically belongs with the Russian Revolution, and every other Leftist revolution like unto it. Francis Schaeffer made this same point in his book, “How Shall We Then Live,” and in episode five of the ten-part video series made from the book.
The American Revolution, although close in time to the French Revolution, ideologically belongs with the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, in which the English replaced Catholic James II with Protestants William and Mary of Orange. And although the French Revolution is close in time to the American, the French Revolution belongs ideologically to the Russian Revolution of 1917. This is the secret as to why the American and French revolutions came to such radically different conclusions.
Kunstler believes America is headed for its own Thermidorian Reaction in the near term:
“America is headed for its own Thermidorian Reaction. It’ll end up being called something else, of course, because it is a different time, place, and set of circumstances. But it feels close, doesn’t it? Everybody I know or correspond with mentions this feeling that something is going to blow in our country, and pretty soon. The air is alive with it, just as the air is alive with portents of spring. Are you waiting for it?”
I think Kunstler if far too optimistic. I see no reaction on the horizon; the America right seems disposed to calmly and peaceably accept every outrage worked upon us. In fact, the current Jacobins in firm control of the United States are praying for a reaction for all they are worth. Because at the first hint of such a reaction, the DOJ, the FBI, and all the other organs of state power, which the Left controls, will come down like a million tons of bricks on the reactionaries, putting the legal screws to them in a way that will make the persecution of the January 6th protestors look like a church picnic.
In fact, most of what the “Biden Administration” are doing—e.g., encouraging the sexual mutilation of minor children, opening the borders to murderers to kill our young people, mocking the created sexual order by making young ladies compete in sports with men, waging war on food and inexpensive energy, still trying to force people to take an experimental gene therapy that will only injure and kill them—can only be understood in terms of intentionally trying to provoke a violent reaction that they know they can and will ruthlessly put down. And they know that the constitutional America they so despise will never recover.
Any Thermidorian reaction must come from the Left itself, because the Left has all the power and controls all the institutions, including all the prosecutors and armed agencies. Despite what you might hear from Seventh-day Adventist pulpits and the Adventist PARL establishment, the religious and cultural Right in today’s America is dis-empowered. It has no power and no ability to affect the course of events. Any “Thermidorian reaction” must come from the Left, from disgust at its own vicious, evil behavior. I do not see any such self-disgust anywhere among the Left, only a fanatical commitment to doubling down on its project of dismantling America, brick by brick, institution by institution.