What then followed was a revolution-the French Revolution-taken over by an elite fired by the mad ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: this generation of twentysomething men would invent the first modern dictatorship and shed much French blood before taking on Europe, all in the name of the Republic and according to a Virtue that it claimed to embody.
One can't help but recall this French taste for rebellion, idealized as progressive and ultimately positive, as rioters are currently setting fire to the Champs-Élysées.
The truth is that the French state, since Louis XIV and the construction of the castle at Versailles, demonstrates again and again its incapacity to balance its budget; it is constantly having recourse to some urgent measure to make ends meet.
More likely, the rioters are a jumble of citizens impoverished by taxes and political militants given to violence, as well as ordinary thugs attracted by the shop windows of the Champs-Élysées.
For my part, unlike more visionary commentators, I find that vandals-even drunk ones-are less a threat than militants.
The latter is therefore more fearsome than the former.
The French believe that revolution is a good thing-it's what they learn in school.
https://www.city-journal.org/paris-riots
One can't help but recall this French taste for rebellion, idealized as progressive and ultimately positive, as rioters are currently setting fire to the Champs-Élysées.
The truth is that the French state, since Louis XIV and the construction of the castle at Versailles, demonstrates again and again its incapacity to balance its budget; it is constantly having recourse to some urgent measure to make ends meet.
More likely, the rioters are a jumble of citizens impoverished by taxes and political militants given to violence, as well as ordinary thugs attracted by the shop windows of the Champs-Élysées.
For my part, unlike more visionary commentators, I find that vandals-even drunk ones-are less a threat than militants.
The latter is therefore more fearsome than the former.
The French believe that revolution is a good thing-it's what they learn in school.
https://www.city-journal.org/paris-riots
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