Revolutions

The poor and/or the more well-off among the ruled have had it with the rulers and they explode:

In the 2nd century BC in Rome, Tiberius Gracchus, a Senator, thought that the state favored the wealthy too much to stay stable, and attempted to shift things in favor of a broader power base. His popularity with small farmers was tremendous, and appalling to the upper class. His fellow Senators had him killed in 133 BC. The following century is called the Roman Revolution, but it's not the kind of revolution I have in mind here. It was the opposite of a struggle on behalf of the ruled: it was the attempt by one tyrant after another to consolidate all authority in the state into his own hands. Eventually, the man we know as Augustus succeeded in this. The ill-fated attempt at reform by Tiberius Gracchus -- that I would call a revolution.

Spartacus led a revolution of slaves which occupied a large chunk of Italy from 73 to 71 BC. This revolution was crushed, but it was impressive. Later revolutionary movements have named themselves after Spartacus.

To what extent were the Cathar movement and the Hussites and other Medieval uprisings political revolutions, and to what extent were they religious movements? Good question. I don't know.

Martin Luther's rebellion against the Roman Catholic Church was mistaken by many peasants in Germany as a rebellion against all political authority, and they rose up in large numbers, thinking they had Luther's support. On the contrary, Luther was appalled by this disorder and urged the aristocrats to crush the uprising and punish the leaders severely, which they did.

Nevertheless, many people continued to associate Protestantism with revolution. Luther was dead in the 1560's when the mostly-Protestant United Netherlands began to revolt against the very, very Catholic Spain, so we don't know what he would have made of the Dutch Revolution. By 1609 at the latest, the Netherlands were for all practical purposes an independent country. A revolution which succeeded for once! In 1648 Spain finally recognized the Netherlands' independence. After many other nations had.

Between 1640 and 1688, the English deposed and executed King Charles I and secured some civil rights from King William III and his co-ruler Queen Mary II. The term "English Revolution" means different things during this era to different people.

The American Revolution, 1775 to 1783, or 1764 to 1787, or pick out your own dates, was led by people who thought of themselves as Englishmen who merely insisted upon the constitutional rights which had been granted to Englishmen by William and Mary in 1688.

The French Revolution, 1789 to -- when? -- was led by people who thought they were emulating the American Revolution, but who went much further in overturning the old order, far enough to horrify many American leaders. When did the Revolution end? Was Napolean revolutionary, or did his rule represent reaction and the end of the true revolution? People argue about such things.

The leaders of the Russian revolution (1917-1991) generally admired the French revolution, had various views of the American revolution, and greatly admired Abraham Lincoln.

In 1918, just months after the Russian Revolution began, the German government collapsed, the Kaiser fled, and various local governments were in charge of different parts of Germany. The most powerful single political party was the SPD, the German Social Democratic Party, which had been Karl Marx's party. The SPD did not remain a single party for very long. Some of its members wanted to join the international Revolution -- usually known as the "Russian Revolution." They ended up breaking away from the SPD and renaming themselves, first the Sparticists, and then the KPD, the German Communist Party. The remaining SPD produced many of the leaders of the Weimar republic and the Bundesrepublik, is still around, and has been at times much less Leftist than what Marx had in mind.

I don't know much about the Chinese Revolution. Sorry.

The Vietnamese revolutionaries (mid-19th century to the present) fought occupation first by the French, then by the Japanese, then the French again, then the US until the occupation ended in the 1970's. I'm sure this experience has colored Vietnamese attitudes toward the American and French revolutions.

Fidel Castro, revolutionary leader of Cuba since 1959, greatly admired the US. After overthrowing Batista in 1959 with overwhelming popular support, he tried to ally his government with the US. The US rebuffed Castro, not the other way around, and then and only then did Cuba became the ally of the Soviet Union, and anybody who tries to tell you any different is -- wrong. (I felt like writing something much ruder than "wrong" there.)

Ditto for the Sandanistas, who ruled Nicaragua from 1978 to 1990 and have remained one of several parties in the country since then. Almost ditto: Nicaragua and the US actually were cool from 1979 until Reagan took over from Carter in January 1981 and started the whole Iran-Contra-Cocaine boondoggle.

And there have been many more revolutions! Who's next?

Christianity, The Enlightenment, The American Revolution And The French Revolution

Person A asserted that the leading minds of the Enlightenment were "almost all devout believers," and that the Enlightenment was an attempt to better understand God by using science to better understand His creation. I responded, and I quote:

"Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Voltaire -- all devout believers? Hm. Another view is that they were all atheists, and came as close as they dared to openly saying so, often getting themselves into serious trouble just for suggesting it between the lines ("I advance masked," Descartes said. Will we ever know just exactly what he meant by that?), bravely preparing the ground so that later atheists could express themselves openly without getting tortured and burned alive for it."

(Of course, other leading minds of the period, such as Pascal, Leibniz and Newton, were in fact devout believers. And Berkeley was either a Christian or fooled some people into believing that he was. He was an Anglican-Irish Bishop, after all. I don't see anything in his philosophical speculations about consciousness and perception which is incompatible with atheism, but perhaps that's just me. The point is that the Enlightenment as a whole cannot be categorized as either pro- or anti-religion or pro- or anti-Christian, things simply weren't that clear-cut.)

At this point person B jumped in and said that "the Atheistic/Humanist Enlightenment French Revolution" resulted in "Robespierreian" slaughter, whilst Christian Enlightenment brought forth "Free America." And he greatly startled me by asserting that "Franklin & other Founders (who deeply understood implications of various philosophic thoughts) warned the American Revolution inspired French philosophers not to cut Christianity out of their model, that otherwise the coming French Revolution would fail." I'm writing this blog post instead of responding to B. Although I feel that perhaps I should respond to B. The Stoic side of me says I should, that it is my often-unpleasant duty to try to educate dullards, that that is what I can, and should, contribute to society. Of course, the Epicurean part of me not only avoids morons but strongly urges people I like to do the same. I'm here being Epicurean and avoiding getting all dirty by wrestling a pig.

So, "Free America." My immediate thought was that African and Native Americans might not think of America as particularly free. Many from both groups fought with the British against the rebels in the American Revolution. England and France and many other countries emancipated slaves long before the US did. "Free." Unions have faired much better in most of Europe than in the US. I have a feeling that B believes the "right to work" actually amounts to more freedom for workers, and that unions, with their much higher wages, health insurance, protection from mistreatment and unwarranted dismissal, somehow oppress workers.

Be that as it may, did Franklin warn French philosophers not to divorce themselves from Christianity, or the French Revolution would fail? I'm having trouble substantiating this. For one thing, to what extent did Franklin foresee the French Revolution? He died in 1790 when it was barely underway. He supported the movement to give full legal status to French citizens who weren't Catholic which finally came to success when Louis XVI signed the Edict of Versailles in 1787. Was this advocacy deism/stealth atheism, or everyday Protestant partisanship? Franklin's views on religion aren't at all clear -- not to me, at least. At times he seems like a tiresome pious old schoolmarm, lecturing the American Revolutionaries for not praying enough as a group, and at times he seems like a deist neocon in that he advocates traditional Christianity for "the masses" but not for clever people (such as himself of course) who see through it all. I suppose it's possible that he gave that sort of neocon-type advice to this or that French philosopher between bouts of chess and lechery. (Can you tell I'm not as impressed by Franklin as many others have been? Good.)

So, one, I can't find evidence that Franklin really did advise anyone who was planning the French Revolution to keep Christianity in it, and two, more importantly, I don't particularly care if he did. Many American atheists seem to have the unfortunate habit of treating the public and private utterances of the Founding Fathers, Tom Paine and Mark Twain as if they were Holy Scripture, quoting them as if the quotes were sufficient to settle disputes of all kinds. I don't.