For everyone out there supporting the #Occupy Movement, who calls themselves part of “the 99%”, identifies with their alleged struggle, and supports their strategies and tactics, you may want to think twice.   History has taught that when the Left uncorks the radical movement, change comes swiftly…to the Right.

If one hops into the Way-Back Machine and plops down in late 18^th century France, one is apt to re-discover that fixture of high school European history known as The French Revolution.  Few would argue that French monarchy was a system worth endorsing.  But how quickly we forget what replaced it – a radical left-wing action that resulted in a secular Democratic republic that was a wee bit authoritarian.  Actually, if memory serves, there was this thing called The Committee of Public Safety – a virtual dictatorship run by crazy Robespierre that resulted in the Reign of Terror.

There’s a great quote from Robespierre to justify the use of violent repression, “Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible”.   Hmmmm.  Terror = Justice.  Now just slip the word “Social” in there before “Justice” and you can see where I’m headed.  But just so I can complete this parallel, Robespierre arranged to have even his allies executed so he could run the show himself, with his power assisted throughout the countryside by the Jacobin Club aka Popular Societies aka ACORN.

While the MSM spins about the “non-violent, non-Anti-Semitic non-racist #Occupy Movement”, your intrepid journalists here at The Bigs have uncovered tons of evidence that demonstrate just the opposite. Indeed, plans are in the works to….what’s the word?….terrorize the opponents of the People’s Revolution aka Obama’s #Occupy Movement. The result of all this violence was The Thermidorian Reaction – a swing back to the Right following the revolution.   I repeat, to the Right.

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Once again, the World is witness to the revolutionary aspirations of a people long suppressed. Today it is Egypt. Yesterday it was Tunisia and decades before that Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Iran.  The Russians endured their own revolution in the early 1900’s and the French in the 1800’s.  We had our own in the century before and there have been others in between.

So what will become of Egypt?   Will true democratic reform follow? Or will their aspirations be hijacked in an exchange of rulers more interested in their power than others freedom?  While the courses of revolutions are rather unpredictable, the answer likely lies with the nature of Egyptian society.

Some transitions, whether catalyzed by an internal revolution or outside regime change, succeed and are witness to an enlightened new rule; others fail and either relapse into prior existences or merely exchange one set of rulers for what the French philosopher Voltaire would say were others, only less refined.

Another 18^th Century French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was more stark when he wrote that

“People accustomed to masters will not let mastery cease … Mistaking liberty for unchained license, they are delivered by their revolutions into the hands of seducers who will only aggravate their chains …”

So why do some transitions succeed where others fail?  The answer lies in the political and economic maturity of those who would rule and the disbursement of economic power. The French Revolution, which began the year after Rousseau’s death, featured great economic disparity between the rulings classes and an underclass that mistook their inspired but sudden liberty for unchained license.   Unaccustomed to governing and with a limited commercial underpinning, the property they destroyed was not their own.

In the end, the divergence between their aspiration to govern and their ability to govern left them vulnerable to seducers.  The chaos, which included the Reign of Terror and the deaths of thousands at the hands of “reformers,” was finally quelled by the order of another master in the form of Napoleon – thereby fulfilling Rousseau’s warning.  The Russian Revolution followed a not dissimilar pattern and featured a similar, scarce middle/commercial class for whom self-governance was a stranger.

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It was as if someone was trying to send me a message. It seemed as though every radio talk show, every commentary, each political debate during the past twenty-four hours centered on the issue of individual power vs. collectivism in American society. It is my contention that individual power based on a trust in the “goodness” of man is at the heart of what made the United States great. Secondarily I believe that the difference in that trust in the ultimate intention of the American citizenry is the main issue that divides the Conservative and the Liberal/Progressive movements.

Allow me to explain, but first  please understand that for the purpose of this discussion I will be speaking in absolutes. It simply makes it easier to argue. We should all understand  that in-between the polar opposites of of which are discussed are thousands of gradients of gray. The two polar opposites of which I speak are of course Liberalism and Conservatism.

The Conservative philosophy is based on a belief in the ultimate goodness of man. That is given the choice between doing “good” and doing “bad.” Conservatives believe that when free enough to make the decision, man will do the right thing. After all man, as the bible says, was created in God’s image. Like God, man will strive to do good, either for the benefit of himself and family and/or for the benefit of the nation itself. Therefore as your beliefs move closer to conservatism along the political spectrum those beliefs will include that lesser government is needed because man can govern himself.

Conservatives focus on the individual and because that individual is born with the inclination to do well, any rights that come with that inherent goodness, come from God who also gave man that inherent goodness. Hence the belief expressed in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In Conservative thought, government’s primary role is to protect those unalienable rights.

Thus when you understand the Declaration of Independence you also understand that the American Revolution was based on conservative principles.

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Every once in a while one gets an insight into the sad state of higher education in the United States.

Back in 2008, when my agent was attempting to market the manuscript of what recently appeared in two companion volumes under the titles Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect, he ran into an unexpected snag.

None of the editors at the trade presses he approached had ever even heard of Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu.

That came as a shock to me; and when I repeated the story to other students of the eighteenth century, they expressed amazement and dread.

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