Opinion of Maximilien Robespierre

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Why do Americans seem to be obsessed with the French Revolution???

Because it is the first example to occur to demonstrate what could have easily happened in America had it not had such leaders as Washington, Adams, Franklin etc to help steer a moderate course.

The French Revolution helped to define the first party system and created the initial divide between Conservatives and Liberals (Classical Liberals) that lasted for at least a century, and elements of which still persist to this day. Part of the reason for that is it fit neatly into the context of adoption of the Constitution and what had motivated it (excess of democracy or tyranny of the mob).

Commercial Elites were scared to death of the wild men on the frontier, augmented by immigrants, and feared that the country would descend into mob rule and wanted a strong central gov't with a big military and Navy to protect them and soceity from upheaval. They were elitists who disdained immigrants and the common man, opposed liberalizing the franchise, wanted a standing Army and a Navy, and were pro-British against Revolutionary France and became known as the Federalists.

The masses loathed the elites and saw in them the seeds of Aristocratic and even monarchical rule and found the greatest threat to freedom in the centralization of power. They were generally pro-immigrant, opposed a standing Army and were pro-Revolutionary France. They became the Democratic-Republicans under Jefferson.

To the former group, Revolutionary France was what America would have looked like absent the new Constitution and had the people turned on each other in the chaos following the American Revolution. They saw it as a vindication and endorsement for their side of things as well.

Modern Conservatism also owes its existance to the writings of Edmund Burke in a book titled "Reflections on the French Revolution...".  The basic tenet of a Conservatism that embraces freedom and democracy is that when such goes too far, it is counterproductive and the end result is tyranny of no government followed by the tyranny of a savior riding in on horse or just taking advantage of the chaos to seize power. Revolutionary and Napoleonic France is the perfect case study of this in action. Russia in 1917 and Weimar Germany are more modern examples.  


Some light and easy reading on the matter:
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/PCom/?20120213-0

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[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The problem is that, Americans, like French, believe in a false interpretation of the French Revolution. So this is always something that saddens me when I read threads about the French Revolution on this board.

I hope that the next centuries will finally reveal what really was the French Revolution, a bourgeois revolution.

Whether it is a bourgeois revolution or not is beside the point in this consideration, though. What matters in this context is that the revolution went so far as to effectively eat itself leading to a strong man seizing power at the end.