Sub Terra Vita --Chronicle #8: The Price of Liberty—Part II

Sub Terra Vita

By Tim Krenz

July 13, 2015

Chronicle #8: The Price of Liberty—Part II

In great part inspired by the American experiment in self-representative government, and bankrupted greatly by helping the United States win its independence from Great Britain, the country of France began her own revolution.

The American revolution proceeded on the whole as a moderate and controlled change of political-economic relationships. France's revolution, however, went radically different, leading in the end to the dictatorship under a totalitarian system and 23 years of warfare in Europe and elsewhere, which almost undid the revolution in America in undeclared and declared warfare. The price of liberty in the world became once and since then, the willingness of a culture to struggle, endure, and even bleed, to ensure the hearts and minds of women and men remain free in conscience.

Even more, the rewards in society from keeping informed on issues and active in the body politic became nothing less than liberty to control the last ounces of property people have: To keep their very bodies free from harm and from the control of others. Out of the upheaval of France's smashed ancien regime, the blood-lust of the crowds watching the guillotine, and the despair of society needing order out of its chaos, the modern problems of the world began to take shape. In many ways, the world struggles with the problems and questions arising and remaining from the French Revolution.

In order to find a way to pay its debts in May 1789, the King of France, Louis XVI, convened the Estates General, which had not met in over 170 years, with the promise of tax reform to distribute the burdens more equitably. Until then, the weight had fallen on the common people—peasants and small businessmen (the bourgeoisie)—to pay taxes, and often then to aggrandize the life-styles and comforts of the nobility and the church, with the latter two often exempt from the tax system.

Incited by the promise of change, and charged with the passions of resentments, on July 14, 1789, the people of France began what properly became a social, not necessarily political-economic, revolution, when they overran the King's prison at the fortress called, The Bastille. As the symbol of the old ways of rulers ruling masses, and not in the interest of the masses, taking the prison meant for the French taking power from the rulers and bringing it into their own hands. France's political stability remained weak, from that event until the coup that brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power in 1799, which marks the end of the French Revolution.

Whereas the American revolution had gone measure for measure under leaders and factions in competition, thus moderating the transition and sharing of powers, France's people suffered for its uncontrollable revenge against the past and overoptimism for the future. And still today, countries seeking change in their societies, and in their governments, take action that often leads to terror over the people. “Revolutions eat their children,” said one French revolutionary. Preventing the passions of partisanship, class, and prejudice from turning into something no one can control becomes a guard watch by every person, wherever they live, to stop, think, engage in tolerant dialogue, and figure out ways to equitably solve problems. If not, events can consume all, and like the French revolution, people would suffer unbelievable hardship and bloodshed, to save that which they should never relinquish in the first instance by sloth and carelessness: Their freedom of conscience and the right to their property; and indeed, their very liberty to live and let alone.