The Reign of Terror, Reconsidered
Ever since reading Simon Schama’s masterwork Citizens
The bloodletting reached its apex in the aptly named ‘Reign of Terror’ under Robespierre, and it is with an eye toward that historical episode that John Kekes writes in City Journal, and timely his words are:
These atrocities were not unfortunate excesses unintended by Robespierre and his henchmen but the predictable consequences of the ideology that divided the world into “friends” and less-than-human “enemies.” The ideology was the repository of the true and the good, the key to the welfare of humanity. Its enemies had to be exterminated without mercy because they stood in the way. As the ideologues saw it, the future of mankind was a high enough stake to justify any deed that served their purpose. As Loomis puts it, “[A]ll who played a role in the drama . . . believed themselves motivated by patriotic and altruistic impulses. All . . . were able to value their good intentions more highly than human life. . . . There is no crime, no murder, no massacre that cannot be justified, provided it be committed in the name of an Ideal.”
The ideal, however, was simply what Robespierre said it was. And the law was what Robespierre and his followers willed it to be. They changed it at will and determined whether its application in a particular case was just. The justification of monstrous actions by appealing to a passionately held ideal, elevated as the standard of reason and morality, is a characteristic feature of political ideologies in power. For the Communists, it was a classless society; for the Nazis, racial purity; for Islamic terrorists, their interpretation of the Koran. The shared feature is that the ideal, according to its true believers, is immune from rational or moral criticism, because it determines what is reasonable and moral.
There’s something in that passage for everyone; the Far Left can compare those words to Bush’s ‘You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists’ and shudder; my own unease comes as I contemplate the very real possibility that a nuclear Iran would target Israel, and think little of consequences.
Still, there is that nagging sense that Kekes is talking to all of us, right and left, bloggers and journalists, politicians, and citizens, Islamist and democrat:
Castigating Robespierre more than 200 years after his death would have little point if he were not the prototype of the ideological frame of mind that is very much with us today. If we understand him, we understand that it is utterly useless to appeal to reason and morality in dealing with ideologues. For they are convinced that reason and morality are on their side and that their enemies are irrational and immoral simply because they are enemies. Negotiation with such people can succeed only if we have overwhelming force on our side and have shown ourselves unsqueamish about using it. Justifying its use to the electorate of a democratic country—used to thinking of politics as a process of reasonable negotiation and compromise—must involve showing in sickening detail the monstrosities committed in the name of the ideology. And that is the point of reminding ourselves of the crimes of the long-dead Robespierre.
The most thought-provoking piece I’ve read it quite some time…
I remember back in college one of my poli sci professors use to argue that the American Revolution was a misnomer, because an uprising only counted as a revolution in her book if you had a complete upending of the social order. Based on that definition, she was right; the founders were the existing colonial leaders, after all. But what bothered me was she clearly had that sort of semi-Marxist, romantic view of revolutions, in which class and money are everything, the old regime must be wiped out completely, etc. I guess when you’re living in your tenured position in the ivory tower, you can’t quite see the gutters running with blood, which seems to be the usual result of such revolutions.
I do get unnerved by the vitriol I see spouted on the Internet. It starts with the childish taunts of Rethuglicans and Dumbocrats and it descends from there. I worry sometimes that the vicious echo chambers that are so easily created on the Internet will lead the more unbalanced folks to start taking the nasty talk to the next logical step. So far, that hasn’t happened, possibly because people are always braver in their talk when they’re anonymous and among fellow travelers. But I keep worrying a nasty day will come.
There are a couple good examinations of what you mention dennis. A goog of “disinhibition internet” will bring up some scholarly treatments worth a glance. Personally it’s not too alarming to me cuz it is not some new phenomenon as some seem to think. Read up on some of the electoral history of the early Republic; the age of Harrison/Tyler saw off Martin van Ruin in dire terms rhetorically. Lincoln was by far the most hated President in American history by these rhetorical standards, before he became an Immortal Saint. Not that Bush is Lincoln…. not that he ain’t!
On the French, there seems to have been much Bonaparte bashing, or revisionism we might say in the historical field in the last few decades. In many ways Boney was as the English painted him; a dictator, a tyrant and a cruel master to the French and the conquered peoples of Europe but in the context of the lately blood-filled gutters and the sorry state to say the least of the governments toppled it is no easy judgement that Liberty, Equality and Fraternity were empty boasts. We still live with the consequences of the Bastille; political and even moreso, philosophical. Sarkozy and Chirac are yet guided rhetorically by the echoes of those years. Was it Lenin who declared a hundred years ago that the results of the Frecnh Revolution were not yet clear? Maybe it was Mao. Yes, I think so.
All too true, and one could make the case that since the French never really settled their Revolution (Bony’s appearance and brief resurrection being the counterweight), their country will always be in the throes of an identity crisis.