Two Revolutions, Part 3 of 3

Although many subsequent revolutions have invoked "the Spirit of '76", they have more likely been infused with the spirit of '92.  Marx was full of the ideas of the French, not the Anglo-American revolutions.  His goal was the same radical egalitarianism of the Paris mob, rather than the preservation of hard-won liberties.  National Socialism in Germany, the Bolsheviks of 1917 Russia, Lenin, Mussolini, and far too many of the governments that replaced the colonial powers in the aftermath of World War II have taken their cue from France of 1792 rather than the North American colonies of 1776.

And it is the French, not the American Revolution that is the driving ideological force of the Progressive movement in the United States.  Obama is the pinnacle of that movement to date and in him you see its tendency towards absolutism, a radical egalitarianism imposed from above, opposition to mediating institutions - especially the Christian church (and within that, especially towards the Catholic Church) - a willingness to incite the mob (think union violence against AIG executives, Tea Party, etc.; the Occupy crowds; and so on).  The checks on governmental authority the founders viewed as essential to liberty, understood as the preservation of rights to property, self-defense (bearing arms), and representation are seen, correctly, as impediments to this egalitarian vision in which everybody has the same and is the same.

So it's no surprise that Obama ignores Congressional prerogatives to make "recess" appointments when Congress isn't in recess - or that leftists in Congress don't find it all that objectionable when he does (though they'd scream bloody murder if a Republican had done it).  Nor is it a surprise that he has, through his health vice-dictator, imposed severe restrictions on the Catholic Church without regard to the First Amendment.

But have a care if he succeeds.  Almost all of those -isms we supposedly fear - fascism, Nazism, communism, and the like - they have their origins in the French Revolution.  They are fruit of the same tree.  Like the Terror of the 1790s in Paris, the death of liberty in Italy under Mussolini, the concentration camps of Germany, and the gulags of communist regimes everywhere, death and suffering are the bitter taste of that fruit.  If you don't think it can come here, think again.

Do I think this is what Obama wants?  No.  But Lenin also only had the best interests of the Russian people at heart, as did Hitler for the Germans and Mussolini for the Italians.  One needs to break eggs to make omelets, right?  They will create their perfect society no matter how many people must die in the making of it.  Even if Obama were to hold back, he would be followed by those with no such scruples.  We do not need a second American Revolution, this one more along the lines of the French.